The name Tessa Virtue sounds so artificially pure that you could be forgiven for thinking it belonged to some girl detective or a porn star. But no, she’s a Canadian figure skater who has the wholesome, natural looks of a particularly attractive pioneer or maybe a TV star from a different era. She’s barely 20, and when you look at her, you see a kind of nubile optimism radiating from her, and on Monday night, she and her partner, Scott Moir, won the gold medal in Ice Dancing.
I knew nothing about them, as I’ve paid scant attention to the Olympics. The coverage has been driving me bananas, like I was being force fed some sort of Athletic Telethon packaged to resemble Entertainment Tonight. Honestly, the only way I’ve been able to stomach it is to turn off the volume on the TV, and that makes me feel like some crabby and eccentric shut-in, and so I’ve just been skipping it.
But on Monday night I decided to go to a local pub and see if I could catch the Olympic spirit by sharing the experience of watching with other people. The bar I was in was sparsely populated, and the few staff and customers that were present seemed kind of bored and tired, like they were serving a detention. The volume on the TV was off and nobody was paying any attention to the games that were unfolding on the big screen.
Now, I don’t like figure skating very much, and was frankly kind of embarrassed to find myself alone in a bar, drinking a glass of Sauvignon Blanc and watching Ice Dancing, but there you have it. One of the very funny things about the Winter Olympics is how quickly I feel like I’ve become an expert on whatever featured sport is being broadcast. Within 10 minutes of watching, I imagine myself as expert as a judge. “Oh, she’s losing her form!!” I’ll shout while watching speed skating, as if I actually speed skated or something. And so, as the Ice Dancing was taking place, I began running a little commentary, first to myself, and then, as I noticed people starting to pay attention, out loud.
Even though the sound was off, and the accompanying bar music was Jethro Tull, we could see that they skated a great, even romantic program. It was ridiculous, but we all started to get excited, shouting things like “They nailed it!” And they did, they did nail it.
Breathless and happy, they stood on the podium singing the National Anthem, and they could not have been more innocent or beautiful. They looked as perfect as a couple of kids who had just graduated from high school, who now, flush with confidence and hope, were ready to take on the world. It was, I guess, exactly what those of us sitting in empty bars need the Olympics to project back to us.