Canada has, in recent years, become the go-to country for making things way sexier than they have any business being, so perhaps it should come as no surprise that their Olympic athletes are turning the 2018 Pyeongchang skating rink into their own personal Spice Capades.
During the free dance portion of Sunday’s team figure skating competition, guileless Americans like yours truly tuned in to cheer for Adam Rippon, Mirai Nagasu, and the Shibutani siblings, only to immediately question our national loyalties when the Canadian ice dancing duo of Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue took the ice to a Moulin Rouge! medley. And by “took the ice,” I mean “basically made beautiful Canadian ice babies before our eyes.”
Virtue and Moir, who sound like a film-noir detective duo or the subject of a sequel series to TNT’s Franklin & Bash, are a reportedly platonic pair who have been a force in the ice dancing world for going on a decade, winning a gold medal at the 2010 Vancouver Games and silver at Sochi in 2014. In Pyeongchang, they’re the favorite to take home gold in the ice dancing finals that begin later this week. The definitely-not-madly-in-love partners clinched Canada’s gold medal in the team figure skating event, wowing the internet and launching 1,000 ships in the process.
Their routine, which was set to “El Tango de Roxanne” and “Come What May” from Moulin Rouge!, is reportedly a toned-down version of their program, after they deemed a “risque move” to be too controversial for conservative skating judges and the South Korean audience. Having watched both the original routine and the adjusted version, which debuted on Sunday, I can say that the lift in question looks … pretty much the same.
That move, however, paled in comparison to the duo’s second big lift of the skate, when Virtue literally stood on top of Moir’s thighs with the athletic equivalent of knives strapped to her feet. HOW????????
It turns out that logic-defying lifts and undeniable sexual tension are all it takes for figure skating fans across the United States to throw loyalty to the wind and root for our neighbors to the north. There’s nothing the internet loves more than overanalyzing a platonic relationship between a couple of beautiful, incredibly talented people—although, can it really be considered overanalyzing if the two literally kissed during warm-ups? And threw a casual neck-kiss into one of their routines?
What are the Olympics for if not pinning your hopes and dreams on the success of athletes you had never heard of before this month? Or in this case, overinvesting in their forbidden love, repressed in the service of global ice dancing domination? Pardon me while I break out my Canadian flag and maple syrup, because I will go down with this ship.
