Top Canadian team leads ice dance
Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir lead the ice dance competition at the Pyeongchang Olympics after a record-breaking short program set to the rock music of the Rolling Stones, the Eagles and Santana.
The Canadian duo scored 83.67 points on Monday to lead their training partners and biggest rivals, Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron, by more than a point heading into Tuesday’s free dance at Gangneung Ice Arena.
The French couple scored 81.93 points for their Latin short program.
Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue of the U.S. are third, two-hundredths of a point ahead of their compatriots, Alex and Maia Shibutani. Fellow Americans Madison Chock and Evan Bates are seventh.
The two-time Olympic medalists Virtue and Moir broke their own record for an ice dance short program. The pair, who won Olympic gold in Vancouver and silver in Sochi, received level-four marks on all five elements in their program. That included a dazzling midline step sequence to open the program and a rhumba sequence on which they were graded harshly during the team event.
Virtue and Moir helped Canada win team gold.
Rippon opts not to work for NBC
Well, at least NBC will still be able to interview Adam Rippon, right? In a reversal of news she had broken earlier on Sunday, USA Today’s Christine Brennan reported that the figure skater will not, after all, take a job with the network as a correspondent for the rest of the Winter Olympics.
Rippon “decided overnight that he would rather remain as an Olympian,” Brennan reported, citing a source “who would not speak publicly because of the sensitivity of the matter.” She said he did not “want to relinquish his official Olympic standing, give up credential, move out of Team USA housing and miss (the) closing ceremony.”
“I am so flattered that NBC wanted me to work as a correspondent, but if I took this opportunity, I would have to leave the Olympic team and I would have to leave the (Olympic) Village,” Rippon said Sunday on NBCSN (via USA Today). “It’s so important to me, you know, I worked so hard to be on this Olympic team, and my teammates and my friends were there for me during my events, and that meant so much to me, that I really feel like I need to be there for them during their events.”