- JUNG YEON-JE/AFP/Getty Images
- Canada’s Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue
When I was a kid in Canada I spotted a mention in the local paper of a high school basketball game with a twist: one of the coaches couldn’t make it, so both teams had to be coached by the same guy. The memory of reading this has stuck with me as anecdotal evidence of the casual way the Canadians approached every sport but hockey. Hockey was competitive; everything else was gym class.
That’s not a question Virtue and Moir haven’t asked. After the medals were awarded, Moir told the Toronto Sun:
We were both pretty blunt with her in the fall—and even leading up to the Olympics—that we weren’t happy and we felt sometimes that she wasn’t in our corner. [But] she handled that tremendously well. She just, she’s been with us now for ten years and I really think that she loves us and she pours her heart into our choreography.
If art rules, then it’s reasonable for Virtue and Moir and Davis and White to share a coach. Art is ultimately noncompetitive. If athletic prowess, which isn’t, rules, then it might be a bad idea. The day after, Virtue and Moir aren’t so sure themselves.
