Canada's Virtue, Moir win ice dance gold medal

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-02-23 14:01

VANCOUVER: Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir had home fans leaping to their feet as the Canadians ended 34-years of European domination to win the Olympic ice dance gold medal on Monday.

Canada's Virtue, Moir win ice dance gold medal

Canada's Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir finish their performance in the ice dance free dance figure skating event at the Vancouver Winter Olympics February 22, 2010. [Agencies]

Virtue and Moir's stirring performance to Mahler's Symphony No 5 raised the domed roof at the Pacific Coliseum after they were awarded a combined total of 221.57 points. They beat Americans Meryl Davis and Charlie White by 5.83 points.

Russian world champions Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin had been tipped as the pre-Olympic favourites but after being bumped down to third place in Sunday's original dance, they could not make up ground and settled for bronze. Since the inception of ice dancing into the Olympics in 1976, Russian or Soviet couples had captured all but two of the gold medals.

Britain's Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean (1984) and French couple Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat (2002) had claimed the other two titles.