Milton Steve - Tessa & Scott: our journey from childhood dream to gold

In the first edition of Tessa and Scott, written shortly after the young Canadians won the Olympic ice dancing gold medal at Vancouver in 2010, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir used the opportunity to shed a brighter light on many important details of their unique partnership and skating history. Much of it, Tessa says, was new information at the time.

It was their way of sharing with skating fans some of the inner workings of their career that they hadnt previously communicated, partly because theyd taken much of it for granted while living it, and partly because they were rising world-class athletes in a very competitive environment.

The same motivation the desire to be open with loyal fans about parts of their story that werent fully known while they were actually happening also drives the second edition of Tessa and Scott. There are three new chapters, the final three of the book, picking up where the first edition left off: with Tessa and Scott formally committed only to competing in the 2011 World Championships.

But, of course, they competed for much longer than that: through the 2014 Sochi Olympics, where they won the silver medal, and, after two full seasons away from the competitive world, the Comeback of 2016 18 resulted in, first, an undefeated world championship season, and then culminated in their second Olympic gold in the individual ice dance event at Pyeongchang on February 20, 2018.

With their 2018 gold medals in both the team event and the individual ice dance, Tessa and Scott became the first figure skaters ever to win five Olympic medals, and just the second ice dancers to win two Olympic championships. This feat showed remarkable longevity at the summit of a sport that had been made much deeper, and more competitive, by the International Skating Unions scoring and rule changes.

And there was an almost surreal symmetry to their three individual Olympic medals, three world championships, and two world silver medals between 2010 and 2018. Each time, their main rivals really their only rivals were their training partners at the same club, with the same coaches. From 2010 to 2014, they trained with and competed against Meryl Davis and Charlie White of the U.S., both teams being coached in Canton, Michigan, by Marina Zoueva (and, for most of their time there, Igor Shpilband). In their two-season return, Tessa and Scott competed against Frances Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron, both teams being coached in Montreal by Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon. All three couples, moreover, had been partners since they were young children.

After Vancouver 2010, Tessa and Scott were often referred to as Canadas sweethearts, but by the time they were singing O Canada atop the Pyeongchang podium, they had a much wider reach. Their successful return to competition and their obvious skill, cohesion, and chemistry had magnetically attracted a following beyond Canada and even figure skating. Inside the sport, many observers, including veteran broadcasters from the United Kingdom, were comparing them favourably to Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, heretofore regarded as the greatest ice dancers of all time. Many thought they might even have surpassed the legendary British duo. Tessa and Scott have never made those comparisons, nor even entertained the notion that they had led an ice dancing revolution. They will only reluctantly concede that they may have got the discussion going in a different direction, and that in advancing their sport they had benefitted from skating with and against extraordinary contemporaries, standing on the shoulders of giants both in the ice dancing world and among the Canadian skating community as a whole.

Their avalanche of titles, honours, and constructive, long-term impact on their sport are the bones of their story. But the flesh and blood, the sinews, the heart, have always been, as with most highly motivated and successful people, a little harder to see.

Their struggles at their training base in Canton, hinted at during the Sochi Olympics, were deeper than the public ever knew. Scott was enduring devastating personal losses during the second half of their undefeated 201617 year, the first season of the Comeback. Twice since 2014, they have torn apart and rebuilt the basic principles of their skating. And Tessas chronic exertional compartment syndrome threatened to derail their careers three times from 2008 to 2014.