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 They would circle the ice with nary a word of conversation shared between them, together but yet hardly as one, the chill between them only surpassed by the frosty air in the arena.
There were no angry words or steps standing between Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir. Not then, not ever, truth be told. Rather, just the awkward silence between a young boy and an even younger girl still many years away from figuring out their destiny or the greatness they could achieve together.
"We didn’t talk for a couple of years," Moir said with fondness as he recalled his first steps alongside the only ice dance partner he has ever known. "We were both shy and young. We’d be skating around the ice and I’d say, ‘Let’s waltz.’ That would be all we would say for an hour.
"Things were quite awkward at that stage. Now Tessa would probably say she can’t shut me up."
Things, you might have guessed, have changed in more than just the smallest of ways since the 7-year-old Virtue and 9-year-old Moir were first partnered 11 years ago by Moir’s aunt, Carol Moir, one of half a dozen Moirs on the coaching roster at the Ilderton Skating Club just outside London, Ont.
Surely, there is nothing quiet about the impact these two still very youthful skaters have made in rapid fashion on the ice dance world.
They are already World silver medalists at a stunningly tender age for ice dancers - Moir turns a mere 21 in September; Virtue is just 19.
"No other Canadian team has [ever] moved up the rankings so quickly," said Tracy Wilson, a respected television analyst, an Olympic bronze medalist (with Rob McCall) and one of the country’s all-time greats in ice dance.
"To be sixth at your first World Championships (in 2007), 10 points out of fifth place, then to move to the Grand Prix Final with the best in the world (last December) and finish fourth, six points out of first place, and this is only their second year [on the World stage] ... if you look at their ages, that is remarkable."
Marina Zoueva, who coaches Virtue and Moir at the Arctic Edge Ice Arena in Canton, Mich. with Igor Shpilband, knows she - and a nation, for that matter - have something truly special on their hands.
"Canada has a rare gem," Zoueva said. "They are like a diamond, a rare diamond, and they are already ready to be ahead of everybody in the world."
American ice dancers Meryl Davis and Charlie White, who share training ice with the Canadians in Canton, lend a sense of further awe and amazement to the discussion.
"It’s like they were born to skate with each other," White said. "Even when they are walking through brand-new footwork, it looks like they’ve been doing it for years."
"Skating comes very naturally to them. They make it look incredibly easy," Davis added. "They complement each other so well. Scott’s passion for skating is undeniable. [Tessa] always looks so elegant. The combination of the two is undeniable. They really are great together."
Their beginnings were so humble and, well, so wonderfully Canadian. Virtue and Moir hail from families whose homes were 10 minutes apart back in the day. Both happily bounded around the ice on their own until Carol Moir had what can now only be called a moment of sheer genius.
Not that either of the two young skaters knew it at the time. "I barely remember skating with Scott for the first time. I was 7," Virtue said. "At least someone saw some potential in us, thank God."
Moir, who merely wanted to follow the path his older brother Danny had taken before him, figured out quickly that "I got to skate with a pretty girl every day. It seemed like a path I should be taking."
That path would eventually lead them an hour down the highway to Kitchener-Waterloo and coaches Paul MacIntosh and Suzanne Killing, who put them on the road to where they are today. MacIntosh and Killing were the couple’s coaches when Virtue and Moir won their first national crown as juveniles in 2000 (the competition was then known as Tomorrow’s Champions) in Kelowna, B.C.
"I told Paul I’m just here to have fun," Moir said. "We ended up winning and it was a big surprise."
It did much more than just put gold medals around their necks.
"After that, I realized we might have something here," Moir said. "I thought if we worked hard and kept growing and could grow together, we’d see if we could get a couple more years out of it."
 Two more national crowns followed, in 2001 (pre-novice) and 2004 (junior). Then the decision to leave MacIntosh and Killing - coaches both skaters still call good friends to this day - and head across the border to Michigan.
"It’s where we needed to be," Virtue said.
Their rise has been nothing short of meteoric. At the 2008 Canadian Championships in Vancouver - when Virtue and Moir sealed their first national senior title with their "Umbrellas of Cherbourg" free dance masterpiece - the country truly began to sit up and take notice.
A massive 8 x 10-foot poster of the duo hung in the window of presenting sponsor Bank of Montreal’s downtown Vancouver branch throughout the competition. When Virtue and Moir showed up for a photo shoot in front of the branch one day, their arrival touched off a mini-frenzy of sorts, with one overwhelmed fan running up to Moir and saying, "Are you really that guy?"
Soon enough, many experts think, they will indeed be larger than life.
"They have the potential to go to Torvill and Dean status," said Wilson, invoking the names of the Britons revered in many quarters as the greatest ice dance duo the world has ever seen. "They have the technical requirements, the natural rhythm, the natural grace, the perfect body types and the unison.
"Now I think, artistically and creatively, it’s where they can take the sport. I think that’s going to be the challenge for them. It’s going to be interesting to see which way they’re going to take it."
While their new programs were still works in progress at press time, Moir promised he and Virtue are planning something "outside the box." His partner, he suggests, would not have it any other way.
"Tessa doesn’t like to do anything that anybody else has ever done before," Moir said. "She’s very original; she’s very much her own person. She won’t follow anybody. Sometimes, I’m a little more simpleminded."
"You can only go higher," Virtue added. "We just have to think that way. It’s motivating, it’s encouraging. We’ll reinvent ourselves again; we want to be fresh.
 "It is tricky [to do]. But I love that. It’s what keeps us going every day. Pushing the envelope, trying new concepts, that’s really fun for us."
As hard as they work every day, Virtue and Moir both admit the ride has never been anything but enjoyable.
"Not a [practice] session goes by where I don’t find myself in a laughing fit," Virtue said.
Arguments? If they have had one of any significance, Moir cannot recall it. He is certain that it has never happened with the partner he calls "my younger, more mature sister."
Ask both skaters to talk about why the other is the perfect match and Virtue and Moir all but run out of words - and superlatives. Their admiration for each other is very deep and very real.
"I don’t think you have enough time," Moir said. "I know it sounds fake but it isn’t."
"What isn’t [right about him] is the question," Virtue said.
At the risk of time and space, let’s allow them both to expand on those thoughts, shall we?
Virtue on Moir: "His desire and passion for the sport is unbelievable. Anything he does is 100 percent. He is charismatic, he has personality, everything ... He really is the whole package."
Moir on Virtue: "She’s extremely talented. I think she’s the best female figure skater in the world. Her personality is what puts her over the top. She’s a great girl."
Needless to say, neither can imagine spending a moment on the ice without the other.
"I can’t picture my life without Scott," Virtue confided.
"After what I’ve had with Tessa, I don’t think anything else could parallel it," Moir said.
Neither could an adoring public, which does not doubt more glory awaits these two young phenoms in 2010, when the Olympic Winter Games will be held in their homeland in Vancouver. Shae-Lynn Bourne, who captured Canada’s only World ice dance crown with Victor Kraatz in 2003, is utterly convinced Virtue and Moir will reach even greater heights in the years ahead.
 "For sure, they could win Worlds or win Olympics. How could they not?" Bourne asked. "When you look at them, they look like a magic team. They create magic on the ice. That’s what’s special [about them]. They don’t hold back. They take you into a trance; they take you into their little world. It’s beautiful, it really is."
Wilson tells a similar story of "Umbrellas of Cherbourg," the free dance that catapulted Virtue and Moir to another level - and ever so close to the top of the World podium.
"That dance they created was beautiful," Wilson said after watching Virtue and Moir lay it down so impressively at the Canadian Championships in Vancouver. "You forget that it’s a competition. You forget the technical requirements and the difficulty that they’re doing. It just all works with the overall impact."
For all the acclaim, for all the predictions of greatness, Virtue and Moir remain incredibly grounded. Their World medals sit in their bedrooms back home in London along with the rest of a lifetime of well-earned skating hardware, within daily sight of two sets of families who have been so vital and supportive of everything the two skaters have done.
Moir heads back to Ilderton every weekend he possibly can and still calls it his favorite place to live.
In one breath, Virtue talks with excitement about shopping in Paris and what might await her in Los Angeles when the World Championships arrive there in 2009. "I don’t just like shopping, I love shopping," she said.
But in the next breath, she points out one particular Parisian spree was especially joyful because her mother, Kate, was there to share it with her.
Someday, Virtue said, she would like to carve out a career using her fashion sense, but, she confessed, "I always thought I wanted to get involved in law."
Meanwhile, Moir would like to expand his horizons and get into something more business-oriented.
Before then there is plenty of skating still to be done. Plenty more horizons on the ice to conquer for the teenage girl with the heart of a dancer - Virtue once spent a summer at the National Ballet School of Canada - and her dapper leading man.
They are right where they want to be - on the road to the 2010 Olympic Winter Games. But there are more worlds to conquer before then, including one in less than a year’s time in the City of Angels, where they might well turn in the kind of performance that fits ever so perfectly in the place where the entertainment stars are said to shine more brightly than anywhere else on the planet.
"Right now, our eyes are on 2009," Virtue said. "We’re really looking forward to it. We can’t wait."
Beyond Vancouver and 2010?
"I know we don’t have a plan beyond 2010," Moir said. "We’ll just play it by the situation [at the time]. We do love the world of skating and we’d love to be in it for many more years."
Looking beyond gold medals and World and Olympic titles, there is a sense that this is a couple rocketing toward that rarest level of stardom, with legendary status just a quickstep or two away.
Zoueva, who mentored the path of two-time Olympic pairs champions Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov - thought by many to be the best the sport has ever seen in that discipline - thinks she just might have struck gold a second time with her young Canadian protégés.
"They are the Gordeeva and Grinkov of ice dance," said Zoueva of Virtue and Moir. "That’s what I see."
Wilson, for one, envisions even more than that. After all, Virtue and Moir are just beginning to author a story that may well own a spotlight itself before the final chapter is written.
"For me, it’s like Torvill and Dean," Wilson said. "That’s how I felt watching Torvill and Dean. I’ve seen greatness. I’ve seen something that’s magical and that’s what I see when I watch them ... and they’re [still] kids."
Meaning their best, undoubtedly, is yet to come.
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Archive > Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir: Dancing With Greatness