Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon
didn't survive their best shot at Olympic glory, their dream dying when
Dubreuil crashed to the ice.
Seconds
from finishing their original dance at the 2006 Turin Olympics, and
trailing the leaders by less than two points, Dubreuil fell out of their
final lift, coming down hard on one hip. Unable to put any weight on
her right foot, Lauzon gently glided her off the ice, and then hoisted
his future wife into his arms.
She'd suffered a deep bone bruise. The two never skated the free dance.
Dubreuil
and Lauzon are making happier Olympic memories in Pyeongchang, finding
success behind the boards as the coaches of the world's best ice
dancers.
The top three teams in
Monday's short dance – Canada's Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, Gabriella
Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron of France, and Americans Madison Hubbell
and Zachary Donohue – are among the 17 dance teams they coach at
Montreal's Gadbois Centre.
"It's
interesting, because T (Virtue) and I were the last members to the
school, and it was full of people you knew you'd be in this position
with in two years, that we'd be in a dog fight for our lives to try and
win an Olympic gold medal with, and how they welcomed you with open
arms, and what fantastic people they were," Moir said. "We'd never seen
that before in our career.
"That
stems from the coaches, and the culture that Patrice and Marie-France
and Romain (Haguenauer) created. They just don't put up with anybody
who's not a team player. It's been probably one of the joys of our
career to be involved in this."
Their
training environment is reminiscent of their previous base in Canton,
Mich., where they skated alongside American rivals Meryl Davis and
Charlie White, and shared a coach in Marina Zoueva.
Virtue
and Moir decided to go a completely different direction when they came
out of retirement last season, moving to Montreal to train with Dubreuil
and Lauzon, who are five-time Canadian champions and two-time world
silver medallists.
Virtue and Moir
have said it helps that Dubreuil and Lauzon, who married in 2008 and
have a daughter Billie-Rose, are fresh off competing. They retired in
2007.
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