Gold Standards

It’s been one year since Tessa Virtue became the most famous figure skater in the world. How do you move on from being the best?

- Genna Buck

Tessa Virtue seems frozen in time. Forever twenty-eight, forever dressed as the fated seductress Satine from Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! in a sparkling, backless, slit-to-the-hip burgundy dress. Her legs are perpetually wound around skating partner Scott Moir’s thigh, or his hips, or, famously, his face, in the practically pornographic lift she says they learned from an acrobat. Photos from the day Virtue and Moir won gold for Canada in ice dance illustrate nearly every news and non-news story about the pair since then, of which there are so many that superfans call discovering the cache of content “falling down the rabbit hole.”

Even now, video of their victory at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea — their final Olympic Games — is still being watched and shared online. There she is: trembling down to her skates, smile splitting her face in half, hands coming up to cover her mouth. He roars and scoops her up, lifts her high, buries his face in her neck. Minutes later, they snagged their second gold medal of the Games, the first being for the team event, becoming the most decorated Olympic figure skaters of all time.