Canada’s Team Of Virtue-Moir Wins Ice Dance Gold, America’s Davis-White Silver

For the first time in the history of the sport, a North American team has won ice dancing gold.

Virtue-Moir won with a total score of 221.57. Americans Meryl Davis and Charlie White earned 215.74 to win the silver medal, while Russia’s Oksana Domnina and Maxin Shabalin took home bronze with a 207.64 score.

America’s most popular team, Tanith Belbin and Benjamin Agosto, finished fourth, 4.57 points out of third place.

Our figure skating blog, Required Elements, was offering her thoughts throughout Monday night’s event. Some reaction to the medal winners:

Meryl Davis and Charlie White (USA, Music: Phantom of the Opera): Difficult entry into their pair spin. Great spin. Very passionate of the start. This lift is difficult. Charlie’s hair looking extra awesome right now. That lift looks so painful and frightening. WOW. These twizzles are sooo amazing! Here we go, bring it home strong here. Another crazy lift. I don’t get the music cut at the end, but this program is just so superb to me. Beautiful performance, but I’m not sure if that will do it against a very strong home team. ugh, we’ll see!!! Another aaaamazing score!!! 107.19 for the free dance, 215.74 overall. In first for now. OH Dear, they received a 1.00 deduction for a lift going too long. PLEASE don’t let that be the difference. I wonder if it’s the lift where she was on his leg? That looked different than I remembered.

Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir (Canada, Music: Mahler’s Symphony no. 5): Beautiful clean lines off the top. A bit cheesy here where they stop and look at the imaginary tree or whatever. This first lift is quite the crowd pleaser! Very fast footwork. Slowing down a bit here but that’s ok. Twizzles are good but I don’t think they were as good as Davis and White’s. Another extremely difficult lift. I like it better when they look at each other rather than out into the distance. Augh I LOVE THIS LIFT towards the end. This is a lovely program. Pair spin not as difficult as Davis and White but the whole thing is beautiful. Looked like a weird move at the end there, but I probably think that every time I see this program. I guess I do still prefer Meryl and Charlie, I cannot help it. But I wouldn’t be sad to see this win. 110.42. Wow. That is really huge. 221.57 overall. I really don’t see this team being 6 points better than Davis and White, although I can see the argument for them winning this. Gold to Canada?? Quite a breakthrough!

Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin (Russia, Music: The Double Life of Veronique): I am confuzzled that this team is literally allowed to use “ropes” to help in their skating. I mean...how is that even possible? They are not together on the footwork at all here. Terrible. This program looks liike it needs a couple more months of practice for them. I’m so distracted. I have to give Maxim credit for all this lifting, though. The man must be in pain but fighting through. Although you can kind of tell at the end. I don’t think that should beat Belbin and Agosto, but it will. 101.04 free dance, 207.64 overall.

Laura at Required Elements goes on to say that the gold and silver medal winners performed “two of the best free dances” she had ever seen, adding that two North American teams atop the podium signifies the ushering in of a new era in ice dance.

More: SB Nation’s full coverage of the Winter Olympics and the 2010 Winter Olympics Medal Count Tracker.