Most believe PyeongChang will mark the final Olympics for Canadian ice dancers Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir. But will it be their final competition period?
“We’re quick to say we don’t know because we thought for sure we were done in 2010, and we really thought for sure we were done after Sochi,” Moir said Monday. “We used to laugh at the idea of going to the Olympics in Korea. Look where we are.
“We’re not going to say that we’re done for sure, but when Tessa and I talk about it and look at each other, the feeling is that this is it. You never know, obviously, and we won’t have to make that decision until we’re there. So, that’s the good part about it. But this kind of feels like it.”
Virtue, 28, and Moir, 30, took gold at the 2010 Vancouver Games and silver in Sochi in 2014. They sat out the 2014-15 and 2015-16 seasons before coming back for one more Olympic run.
They went undefeated last year, capped by a third world title in April and first since 2012.
Virtue and Moir head into the fall Grand Prix season -- starting, for them, with next week’s Skate Canada -- as favorites to become the second couple to win multiple Olympic ice dance titles come February.
The other was Russians Oksana Grishuk and Yevgeny Platov in 1994 and 1998.
France’s two-time world champions Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron and three American couples will attempt to send Virtue and Moir out of the Olympic arena in defeat.
Moir, meanwhile, could seal his Olympic career with a kiss on the ice as he did in Vancouver and Sochi. Or, he could go bigger.
“You think I gotta take a step up? I don’t know,” he joked. “I’ll probably do it. I’ll probably just pick a point where hopefully nobody’s watching me, but there always seems to be somebody around.”
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