by Alexandra Stevenson
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The acknowledged two best ice dance couples in the world have been judged as not executing a step invented in 1938 at the maximum “Level 4”. The step is required as part of required Rhumba sequences in the “Short Dance” section of all senior events in figure skating this season. The European champions, Nathalie Pechalat and Fabian Bourzat of France, received Level 4 for the execution of both sequences of their Rhumba. However, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, the Canadian Olympic and 2010 world champions, and Meryl Davis and Charlie White, who, in Moscow last year became the first Americans ever to win the world title, received the lesser “Level 3”. The French duo, 28 and 31, missed the bronze medals in last year’s World championship after they both fell in the final free-skate. This year, she is competing with a broken nose inflicted accidentally by her partner in practice at the Detroit Figure Skating Club where they now train, on March 13. The North Americans are leading the French couple going into the Final section, but only because three other elements are included in the Short Dance. Moir, 24, openly vents his frustration about the importance given to this step, which was invented in Briton in 1938. The long dead Walter Gregory must be laughing in his grave. He certainly never expected his dance would be given this level of microscopic precision. Moir declared, “I wouldn’t say the word would be frustration but we don’t understand why we got the lower level both here and at the Four Continent Championships.” White said, “We really felt like we were hitting those Open Choctaws. On the technical score, we felt a little bit more confident than the marks that we got.” The Open Choctaw requires the couple, holding onto each other, to step as widely as possible with perfectly matched leg lines while transferring their weight from the left foot’s forward inside edge to the right foot’s back outside edge. Twice Olympic champion, Evgeni Platov, a Russian who now trains at a rink in New Jersey, said, “It is undoubtedly the most difficult step in ice dance. You can’t do it alone. You have to have someone to hang on to. But really, if you look at the tapes of skaters from ten years ago, they never did it with to this level of precision, with the Technical Specialists being able to consult stop motion video tape.” On March 13, Pechalat, 28, and Bourzat, 31, nearly took themselves out of the event. While doing a run-though at the Detroit Skating Club, attacking the Twizzles with all their might, his fist hit her nose breaking it badly. (The woman in a pairs’ team risks doing this to her partner during a twist lift, as we witnessed in the Moscow Worlds last year, but this doesn’t usually happen in dance.)
It looked certain they would not be able to compete in Worlds. But Pechalat would not give up. She postponed an operation and breathing through her mouth. Skating the Short Dance last, they could easily have paled by comparison, but they stepped up to the mark and gave a performance for the ages.
In certain respects, they may not have matched the younger Canadian and American whiz-kids, but the emotion they beamed out to the audience was palpable. It was a privilege to watch the long-suffering duo give their mature and mesmerizing performance.
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