LETTING OFF SOME STEAM
Canadian ice dance champions Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir decide to drop risqué move from their routine as they get set to go for gold in Pyeongchang
PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA— They put the sultry into ice dancing. But now they’ve downscaled from rated-X to PG.
Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, on the prowl for a second Olympic gold medal in ice dancing, have decided to modify an ultra risqué lift to take the heat off the hot-hot-hot.
Gone is the neck straddle where Virtue comes out of an up-thrust with her legs hooked around Moir’s shoulders, hands clasping the back of his head — a kind of sex-chokehold. “Porno?” Moir had teased about the erotic move at nationals last month, where the couple copped their eighth national title.
In the slightly altered version to be unwrapped in the free skate here, Virtue still executes the legs-around but only fleetingly before dipping one limb down and then dismounting. There’s no pose-hold as there’d been all season long, so suggestive that The Canadian Press had initially been leery about moving photos on the wire that freezeframed the moment.
“What it came down to actually was that when we slowed it down and looked on the video, it wasn’t esthetically that beautiful of a position,” said Moir of the original lift, following practice Wednesday at the Gangneung Ice Arena. “So we wanted to change it, make it a little bit better.”
New and improved and slightly subdued.
“I think we liked that it made a statement, and it was different,” explained Virtue of the provocative draping silhouette, now ditched. “And that was great for the start of the season. But for the overall vision of the program, we hope that this new position fits a little better.”
The 28-year-old has been around the sport long enough to sense what might not be well-received judge-wise, despite the duo racking up career-best scores with their sensuous rendition of a routine performed to the Moulin Rouge soundtrack.