Virtue, Moir and a gold meddle

Last dance makes Games history despite return of sketchy judging

PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA— Ice dancing: Shame on you.

If the judges got it right in the end, it wasn’t for lack of trying — and conniving — to get it wrong.

Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir are once and again Olympic champions, with the most medals ever won by anybody in figure skating. They had the Gangneung Ice Arena audience up on its feet and a-roar with every breathtaking move executed Tuesday. Yet they came this close to being squished into silver by incorrigible judges.

They never learn, those weasels, no matter how often they are outed and admonished for score-fixing. They are still gaming a system that was completely overhauled following a black-eye scandal at Salt Lake City in 2002 — with rigged marks and placement-swapping — and apparently getting away with it.

Virtue and Moir, with their incandescent performance to the Moulin Rouge soundtrack, did not win the freeskate portion of the competition. Those laurels went to their rivals, Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron of France, with a long program score of 123.35. The Canadians ranked second with 122.40.

It was the combined score — short and long together — which put Virtue and Moir over the top and over the moon, four years after equally dubious scoring in Sochi invested gold on Americans Meryl Davis and Charlie White, eight years after the Canadians triumphed in Vancouver at their Games debut. Canadians: 206.07. French: 205.28. See how scary close? That Virtue and Moir emerged from their third and final Olympics restored to gold was despite the machinations of two judges in particular — American Sharon Rogers and Marie-Christine Hurth of France. Their inflated scores for the French team, in the previous day’s short-program competition, had heads shaking: 81.93 for Papadakis and Cizeron, 83.67 for Virtue and Moir. That put the Canadians in front by less than two points after a clearly superior worldrecord skate. But the French were well within striking distance of gold.

Almost like it was, shall we say, contrived that way.

The French couple’s “Moonlight Sonata” long program is exquisite, if lacking in speed and energy. They own the world record for the free. But no way should the Gauls have come out of the short phase so close on the heels of Virtue and Moir. It wasn’t the X-rated wardrobe malfunction that should have done them in; it was the twizzles, performed too close together and Papadakis having a slight problem catching her skate.

Yet the French received upmost level kudos from the technical committee — an assessment apart from the judges’ scores. What jumped from the detailed judging sheets, however, is how miserly the French and American judges were toward Virtue and Moir on component scores, formerly called presentation marks — the arty side.

The French and American judges were the only ones on the panel not to award the Canadians any 10s at all, both dipping down to 9.25 for transition, while each conferred 10s on the French for composition and interpretation.

Is it all a matter of subjective judging and just plain style preference? It’s not supposed to be.

In practice, though, judges well understand their role — to boost their nation’s skaters.

The French judge’s assignment was to help elevate the French team to the top of the podium. The American judge’s assignment was to lift a U.S. team into the medals.

In the short program — judges were swapped out for the long, though Rogers was on both panels — Canadian judge Leanna Caron did her part by rewarding Virtue and Moir with plus-3s across the board and four component marks of 10. That’s called blunting the rival judges’ impact, but was more in keeping with other marks from the panel.

Perhaps it’s all too inside baseball for casual fans to understand. The bottom line is this: A couple of Machiavellian judges almost succeeded in trumping Virtue and Moir out of gold. They kept the gap after the short narrow enough for the French to jump over the Canadians. And Rogers kept up her miserliness toward Virtue and Moir in Tuesday’s component scores: 9.50, 9.25, 10, 9.75, 10. For the French: 9.75, 10, 10, 10, 10.

There was a frisson of alarm on the faces of the Canadians, who skated last, when the free-skate scores went up and they saw No. 2 next to their names. Then the overall marks flashed.

“We were holding our breath, obviously, in the kiss ’n’ cry,” Moir said, “because we know what fantastic skaters (the French) are, we know that they’re going to post a world record. We thought that was a good enough skate to win us an Olympic title but you never know in this sport, you never know.”

Virtue: “And it would have been embarrassing to celebrate too soon.”

Moir claimed the couple had no idea what score they needed to beat the French — friends and training stablemates in Montreal under shared co-coaches Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon, and world champions during the two years the Canadians took a competitive furlough. “We did know how we would have to skate. We came up with a plan yesterday afternoon with our off-ice team that we wouldn’t know how they skated and just block our ears, let them have their moment. No matter what happened, we (would) get our four minutes and we wanted to make sure we took full advantage of it.”

But the Canadians were certainly aware of the scoring controversy from 24 hours earlier. Too high, those French marks.

“I did have a similar thought,” Moir admitted, “because it was tight and we felt like we kind of blew the roof off the arena. But that’s the scoring system. There’s nowhere else for us to go.”

Meaning, their Latin-rumba short had hit world-record heights.

“We knew today we’d have to come out strong and we were up against it a little bit. I did see that in the marks. What do you do? That’s the sport of ice dance.”

So, after a 30-second deep hug at the end boards, followed by Lauzon spraying them with aromatherapy mist, they stepped onto the ice and skated their hearts out, as they always have.

They were in their own zone — “this insular little bubble and it’s a very safe and protected place,” said Virtue — and it was, in the moment, exclusively about them. Their planet, the rest of us just visiting.

Gold to Canada, silver to France, bronze to Americans Maia and Alex Shibutani.

And, heck, what does another scoring squabble matter now, in triumph, a second gold medal in Pyeongchang after last week’s team event, a new total world record, five Olympic medals since 2010, making them the most decorated Olympic figure skaters in history.

“You know what the beautiful part is?” Moir told reporters. “We’re done. I don’t have to look at the breakdown (of marks) anymore. It’s fantastic. I’ve never felt so free.

“We skated our asses off and we’ve got to be proud of that. The points? I don’t really care anymore.”