Ice dance coach splits loyalties three ways

Marina Zoueva faced the ultimate test of her loyalties at the Winter Olympics on Monday as, in a bittersweet twist for ice dancing's supreme coach, she found her allegiances torn three ways.

Born and raised in Russia, the spiritual heart and soul of ice dancing, a part of Zoueva wanted the host nation to win - but she had also been working tirelessly trying to get the US or Canada to top the podium.

As the longtime coach of American duo Meryl Davis and Charlie White and the Canadian tandem of Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, it is a scenario Zoueva has long had to live with.

Four years ago, at the Vancouver Olympics, she coached the gold and silver medalists, with Virtue and Moir winning on home ice and Davis and White finishing in second place.

On Monday, Zoueva did it again, but this time the placings were reversed with the Americans triumphing ahead of the Canadians.

To complete the picture, the Russian pair of Elena Ilinykh and Nikita Katsalapov finished third, giving Zoueva a part in all three medalists.

After the flower presentation, the winners and runners-up ushered Zoueva to join them on the Iceberg Skating Palace rink.

She embraced them all one by one, then stood in the middle to pose for photographers as the crowd applauded. Then she grabbed two flags, one American and one Canadian, and symbolically held them together as her star pupils traded hugs and kisses.

"Marina really just does an incredible job of coaching us," Davis said after the short program.

"I think the two teams have very different styles, very different strengths and very different approaches to skating in general.

"We are just grateful that certainly while there are complexities that arise, she just does such a wonderful job with putting us all exactly where we feel we need to be."

Before she became a master coach and choreographer, Zoueva was on the mighty Soviet Union team as an ice dancer herself.

She never made it to the Olympics and her best finish at the world championships was fifth, but what she may have lacked in athleticism she has more than made up for with vision and imagination.

Zoueva left Russia in the early 1990s to live and train in North America and she runs an elite academy in Michigan.

Davis and White and Tessa and Moir have been working under her guidance for more than a decade but have completely different routines and styles, each as spellbinding as the other.

Zoueva does not play favorites, and though it is an unusual arrangement it is one that has worked well, with both pairs now having won world and Olympic titles.

On the ice, the duos are intense competitors but away from it they are friends, having spent so much time together over the past decade.

"It has been a fierce rivalry between the four of us and now I think the pressures of this game are kind of just melting away," Scott said.

(China Daily 02/19/2014 page24)