Tessa and Scott by Tessa Virtue

Author:Tessa Virtue
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Anansi Press Inc
Published: 2018-09-17T19:56:22+00:00

Compulsory dance at Four Continents in Vancouver, 2009. Credit: cp/paul chiasson

With coaches Igor Shpilband and Marina Zoueva. Credit: kate virtue

Performing the Viennese Waltz during compulsory dance at Canadian championships. Credit: cp/paul chiasson But they did get through it, and also their demanding quick Original Dance. They had become realistic about their difficult Pink Floyd free dance — “We loved that program,” Scott says — and removed a few interesting steps to make it easier on Tessa’s legs. They won the competition without severe challenge, an important step in their recovery process, but the cost was more than a week of lost training in order for Tessa’s shins to fully recover. They weren’t able to train much before heading to Four Continents in Vancouver, where they were to face Meryl Davis and Charlie White, who’d been enjoying a breakthrough season.

In hindsight, Tessa and Scott had had almost no training, and so shouldn’t have worried about their actual results for the rest of the season. But they are ultra-competitive, and had convinced themselves they needed to win because they were ranked second in the world and because Four Continents would set a tone for how they felt about the Pacific Coliseum, where the Olympics would be held a year later. They got through the relatively easy Finn Step compulsory, weren’t in good enough physical shape to really push their Original Dance program but still won the segment, then lost the free dance, and the gold medal, to Meryl and Charlie.

“Looking back, we were just lucky and happy to make it to the end, really,” Scott recalls. “When we started the last part, which is supposed to be the part with the most energy and the most excitement, we were just dog-tired. My skates were stuck to the ice, and I couldn’t move. We were doing what we call July run-throughs with 8,000 people there.”

Tessa felt that they were letting people down with their performances, and was also feeling a bit guilty that she was saying to the public that she felt great when in reality she was experiencing great pain most days.

“We didn’t want to lie,” she explains. “But we needed to say that everything was fine to believe and to be able to step on the ice and actually compete. Part of it was that, unfortunately, kind of like in the NHL, you don’t say you’re injured because they [the judges] come after you and we already had enough going against us.”

Competing at Four Continents cost them another week of hard training for the Worlds, which were held in Los Angeles, but, ever optimistic, they felt they could still win. Their Paso Doble compulsories were strong, even though they hadn’t made it through the necessary three patterns in one try, and they had immense confidence in their Pink Floyd free dance. At Worlds, they skated better compulsories than they had the previous two competitions and were third, despite Tessa “dying” after the first pattern. In the Original Dance, Scott “mucked up the twizzles ten seconds in,” and they “were pretty shaky for the rest of the program.

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