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"I broke from my Olympic coverage yesterday, but I was able to sneak in a few hours of ice dancing and men&amp;#039;s aerials (scary!) last night, and I&amp;#039;m glad I did. I&amp;#039;ve always been more of a figure skating fan\u2014ice dancing is figure skating without the jumps, right?\u2014but last night&amp;#039;s top performances swayed me. As the announcers put it, ice dancing is even more demanding than figure skating because skaters can&amp;#039;t hide behind any fancy tricks\u2014aside from the twizzles and lifts, of course! (Didn&amp;#039;t even know what a twizzle was until last night, but when done by a pair simultaneously, a required technique during every program, it&amp;#039;s impressive.) Either way, the final freestyle competition had me (and my sister&amp;#039;s sappy boyfriend) swooning. After all, as I learned, ice dancing has got to be one of the most romantic sports of all. And Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, the first Canadians (and first North Americans) to win the gold in an ice dancing competition, had the most romantic routine of all! They performed to Gustav Mahler, and Virtue looked angelic. If you missed the performance, you can get a sense of their style here. It&amp;#039;s a video of their routine at the FD 2010 Canadian Nationals not too long ago. Two-time U.S. champions Meryl Davis and Charlie White, who gave a powerful, clean performance (though penalized for a one-second-too-long lift) to Phantom of the Opera, took the silver. Theirs brings the U.S. medal tally to 25 this Olympics. Russians Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin took a disappointed third. According to NPR, this is only the third time since ice dancing became an Olympic sport in 1976 that a Russian or Soviet couple did not win the gold.  Congratulations to Virtue and Moir!  Photo by Getty. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/life/news/a44967/canadians-win-first-ice-dancing-gold-on-home-turf-3330/>