Tessa Virtue, Scott Moir return to top with Grand Prix Final win

By Nick ZaccardiDec 10, 2016, 12:58 PM EST

Canadians Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir stamped their comeback to the top of ice dance, nearly five years since their last major title, by winning their first Grand Prix Final in record fashion Saturday.

The 2010 Olympic champions, back this season after a two-year break from competition, knocked off the two-time reigning world champions from France, training partners Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron, on French ice in Marseille.

“At the start of the season our goal was really to qualify for this event,” said Virtue, who with Moir earned four Grand Prix Final silver medals before this week’s breakthrough. “After competing at Grand Prix Final five times, it feels nice to finally get the win.”

Virtue and Moir tallied 197.22 points, the highest total ice dance score under a judging system implemented in 2005. The French were 4.11 points behind, followed by U.S. champions Maia and Alex Shibutani in third.

Virtue and Moir completed a perfect fall season in a sport, and a discipline, where a climb back to the top after ceding the throne can be arduous.

Virtue and Moir won the 2010 Olympic title in Vancouver, then swapped world titles with then-training partners Meryl Davis and Charlie White in 2011 and 2012 before being supplanted by the Americans on the Olympic stage in Sochi.

Moir kissed the ice after their final performance in Russia, just as he did in Vancouver, but it was not a kiss goodbye to competition. The couple announced their comeback last Feb. 20.

“We probably have one more shot at it [the Olympics], so we have to take advantage of it,” Moir said then, following up his reported May 2015 comments, “We’re not coming back unless it’s to become Olympic champions again.”

Davis and White have not skated since Sochi (yet haven’t retired), but a new power ascended in ice dance the last two seasons.

In 2015, Papadakis and Cizeron became the youngest world champions in 40 years. They repeated last season, impressively, after Papadakis suffered a concussion in a practice fall seven months earlier.

When Virtue and Moir came back, they joined Papadakis and Cizeron’s training base in Montreal.

“I think we have to earn that term to be associated as rivals to Gabriella and Guillaume,” Virtue reportedly said early this season. “We are not quite there yet for sure, but they have taken the ice dance world to an entirely different level in the last few years.”

Virtue and Moir beat Papadakis and Cizeron by nine points at NHK Trophy two weeks ago, with a world-record total, and scored even better in Marseille.

“We just wanted to be in the mix [this season],” Moir said. “The state of ice dance has come up quite a ways. And this is not something that we expected. Now we know that this doesn’t make it easy for us, it makes it a lot harder. … Now we have a huge target on our backs. … Our workload just multiplied by 10.”

Now, Virtue and Moir may be on their way to a rare feat in 2018 — to win an Olympics, see somebody else win an Olympics, and then regain the gold. Across all figure skating disciplines, only Russian pairs Yekaterina Gordeeva and Sergey Grinkov have done this.

After their win in Marseille, Moir was asked about returning to the Grand Prix Final for a seventh time next season.

“There are a couple of other goals we’re looking for other than the longevity award,” he said.

The Grand Prix Final concludes Saturday with the women’s and men’s free skates (schedule here). NBCSN will air coverage Sunday from 8:30-11 p.m. ET.

MORE: Javier Fernandez builds toward last Olympic chance

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Ice Dance Results
GOLD: Tessa Virtue/Scott Moir (CAN) — 197.22
SILVER: Gabriella Papadakis/Guillaume Cizeron (FRA) — 192.81
BRONZE: Maia Shibutani/Alex Shibutani (USA) — 189.60
4. Yekaterina Bobrova/Dmitry Soloviyev (RUS) — 181.95
5. Madison Hubbell/Zachary Donohue (USA) — 179.59
6. Madison Chock/Evan Bates (USA) — 179.32

Football takes significant step in Olympic push

By OlympicTalkMar 29, 2023, 2:18 PM EDT

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Football took another step toward possible Olympic inclusion with the IOC executive board proposing that the sport’s international federation — the IFAF — be granted full IOC recognition at a meeting in October.

IOC recognition does not equate to eventual Olympic inclusion, but it is a necessary early marker if a sport is to join the Olympics down the line. The IOC gave the IFAF provisional recognition in 2013.

Specific measures are required for IOC recognition, including having an anti-doping policy compliant with the World Anti-Doping Agency and having 50 affiliated national federations from at least three continents. The IFAF has 74 national federations over five continents with almost 4.8 million registered athletes, according to the IOC.

The NFL has helped lead the push for flag football to be added for the 2028 Los Angeles Games. Flag football had medal events for men and women at last year’s World Games, a multi-sport competition including Olympic and non-Olympic sports, in Birmingham, Alabama.

Football is one of nine sports that have been reported to be in the running to be proposed by LA 2028 to the IOC to be added for the 2028 Games only. LA 2028 has not announced which, if any sports, it plans to propose.

Under rules instituted before the Tokyo Games, Olympic hosts have successfully proposed to the IOC adding sports solely for their edition of the Games.

For Tokyo, baseball-softball, karate, skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing were added. For Paris, skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing were approved again, and breaking will make its Olympic debut. Those sports were added four years out from the Games.

For 2028, the other sports reportedly in the running for proposal are baseball and softball, breaking, cricket, karate, kickboxing, lacrosse, motorsports and squash.

All of the other eight sports reportedly in the running for 2028 proposal already have a federation with full IOC recognition (if one counts the international motorcycle racing federation for motorsports).

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Helen Maroulis stars in wrestling documentary, with help from Chris Pratt

By Nick ZaccardiMar 29, 2023, 10:05 AM EDT

Getty

One of the remarkable recent Olympic comeback stories is the subject of a film that will be shown nationwide in theaters for one day only on Thursday.

“Helen | Believe” is a documentary about Helen Maroulis, the first U.S. Olympic women’s wrestling champion. It is produced by Religion of Sports, the venture founded by Gotham Chopra, Michael Strahan and Tom Brady. Showing details are here.

After taking gold at the 2016 Rio Games, Maroulis briefly retired in 2019 during a two-year stretch in which she dealt with concussions and post-traumatic stress disorder. The film focuses on that period and her successful bid to return and qualify for the Tokyo Games, where she took bronze.

In a poignant moment in the film, Maroulis described her “rock bottom” — being hospitalized for suicidal ideations.

In an interview, Maroulis said she was first approached about the project in 2018, the same year she had her first life-changing concussion that January. A wrestling partner’s mother was connected to director Dylan Mulick.

Maroulis agreed to the film in part to help spread mental health awareness in sports. Later, she cried while watching the 2020 HBO film, “The Weight of Gold,” on the mental health challenges that other Olympians faced, because it resonated with her so much.

“When you’re going through something, it sometimes gives you an anchor of hope to know that someone’s been through it before, and they’ve overcome it,” she said.

Maroulis’ comeback story hit a crossroads at the Olympic trials in April 2021, where the winner of a best-of-three finals series in each weight class made Team USA.

Maroulis won the opening match against Jenna Burkert, but then lost the second match. Statistically, a wrestler who loses the second match in a best-of-three series usually loses the third. But Maroulis pinned Burkert just 22 seconds into the rubber match to clinch the Olympic spot.

Shen then revealed that she tore an MCL two weeks earlier.

“They told me I would have to be in a brace for six weeks,” she said then. “I said, ‘I don’t have that. I have two and a half.’”

Maroulis said she later asked the director what would have happened if she didn’t make the team for Tokyo. She was told the film still have been done.

“He had mentioned this isn’t about a sports story or sports comeback story,” Maroulis said. “This is about a human story. And we’re using wrestling as the vehicle to tell this story of overcoming and healing and rediscovering oneself.”

Maroulis said she was told that, during filming, the project was pitched to the production company of actor Chris Pratt, who wrestled in high school in Washington. Pratt signed on as a producer.

“Wrestling has made an impact on his life, and so he wants to support these kinds of stories,” said Maroulis, who appeared at last month’s Santa Barbara Film Festival with Pratt.

Pratt said he knew about Maroulis before learning about the film, which he said “needed a little help to get it over the finish line,” according to a public relations company promoting the film.

The film also highlights the rest of the six-woman U.S. Olympic wrestling team in Tokyo. Four of the six won a medal, including Tamyra Mensah-Stock‘s gold.

“I was excited to be part of, not just (Maroulis’) incredible story, but also helping to further advance wrestling and, in particular, female wrestling,” Pratt said, according to responses provided by the PR company from submitted questions. “To me, the most compelling part of Helen’s story is the example of what life looks like after a person wins a gold medal. The inevitable comedown, the trauma around her injuries, the PTSD, the drive to continue that is what makes her who she is.”

Maroulis, who now trains in Arizona, hopes to qualify for this year’s world championships and next year’s Olympics.

“I try to treat every Games as my last,” she said. “Now I’m leaning toward being done [after 2024], but never say never.”

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