ZOUEVA, SHPILBAND TAKE U.S. ICE DANCE TO THE TOP by LYNN RUTHERFORD
I
t’s the day after New Year’s, and Igor Shpilband and Marina Zoueva have granted their ice dancers an extra hour of sleep. Today, they arrived at Canton’s Arctic Edge complex at 7 a.m. to stretch and prepare for the first training session, reserved for Meryl Davis and Charlie White, the U.S. World champions, and Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, Canada’s Olympic gold medalists. “Tis is late,” Alex Shibutani, the World
bronze medalist who will hit the ice 40 minutes later, said. “Usually, we’re here a lot earlier.” Davis and White run through the rhumba se- quences in their Latin short dance and then circle over to Shpilband, who uses video playback to help analyze their choctaw steps. Virtue and Moir, intent on revamping the curve lift in their “Funny Face” free dance, skate back to Zoueva, who ani- matedly describes the desired positions. Everyone in figure skating expects the two teams, neck-and-neck for three seasons, to con- tinue their dominance through the 2014 Sochi Olympics and perhaps beyond. Only one team can win, but as Shpilband and Zoueva would be
“Welcome to my zoo,” Zoueva said. She has two small dogs; a
well-behaved poodle and lively Pekingese. Two cats, as large as the dogs, like to lounge on the furniture. Zoueva also has a small Angora bunny. “My new baby,” she said, speaking to all of her pets in Russian.
the first to tell you, they will be equally well-pre- pared.
When Alex Shibutani takes the ice, he and
Moir share a quick high five. Tat’s it. No wasted energy, no horseplay. It’s all business on the ice in Canton. “People ask, ‘What do we do here? How do
we do it?’” Zoueva said. “It is discipline and con- sistently following the ISU rules. And that’s it.”
‘WE HAVE NO SECRETS’ Te biggest secret of Shpilband and Zoueva’s success may be that there is no secret. Te harder they work, the more successful their skaters get. “We definitely have an opinion on how ice dancing should look and we’re trying to do what we want to do,” Shpilband said. Te world’s three top couples — Davis and
White, Virtue and Moir, Shibutani and his sis- ter Maia — show all the hallmarks of “Igor and Marina” teams: clean, speedy skating; remarkably fast and well-synchronized twizzles; intricate and smooth lifts. Teir athleticism and precision, com- bined with sheer performance quality, has broken
a 30-year Russian stranglehold on ice dance. Once North America’s least competitive fig-
ure skating discipline, ice dance is now its crown jewel, thanks to Shpilband, Zoueva and their tal- ented pupils. “It was not [a] jump, it was a gradual pro-
gression,” Zoueva said. “[Igor and I] have the same vision of how ice dance should look and we build our discipline on how we think it should be. Te process has to be consistent — that is a key to me.” When the International Judging System (IJS) debuted in 2004, assigning base values to steps, lifts and spins and specifying five program com- ponents, many ice dance coaches bemoaned the loss of artistic freedom. But Shpilband and Zoueva embraced the IJS, on their own terms. “With all the changes, we’re trying to keep the integrity of dancing on the ice, the music, the soul,” Zoueva said. “Te rules always change, what doesn’t change is how we believe things should look. We don’t try to change the skating to fit the rules; [we] try to fit the rules into what we want to do.”
Tat so many top teams flock to Canton,
SKATING 23
PHOTO BY JACQUE TIEGS
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