The Olympics' ice dancing competition wrapped up on Monday night, with Americans Meryl Davis and Charlie White grabbing gold — and a record-setting score to boot.
America: Meryl Davis and Charlie White. | (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
As the pairs glided across the ice, though — first in team competition, then in the short program, and finally in the free dance — opinions as to whether or not the spectacle was also a sport flew fast and heated.
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Mike Foss at USA Today threw down the gauntlet, saying, sure, ice dancing is athletic, tough, and impressive, but it's "absolutely, positively, unequivocally" not a sport. Canadian columnist Rosie DiManno, on the other hand, called ice dancing a sport, just "a tawdry whore of a sport," as Vancouver champions Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir settled for silver.
Wherever you land in the debate, these photos are sure to leave you awestruck at the power and grace required when you're ice dancing your way to Olympic glory.
Canada: Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir. | (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)
Spain: Sara Hurtado and Adria Diaz. | (REUTERS/Marko Djurica)
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Lithuania: Isabella Tobias and Deividas Stagniunas. | (REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson)
Russia: Ekaterina Bobrova and Dmitri Soloviev. | (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)
Germany: Tanja Kolbe and Stefano Caruso. | (REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson)
Turkey: Alisa Agafonova and Alper Ucar. | (REUTERS/Alexander Demianchuk)
Canada: Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje. | (REUTERS/Marko Djurica)
Azerbaijan: Julia Zlobina and Alexei Sitnikov. | (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)
Lauren Hansen produces The Week’s podcasts and videos and edits the photo blog, Captured. She also manages the production of the magazine's iPad app. A graduate of Kenyon College and Northwestern University, she previously worked at the BBC and Frontline. She knows a thing or two about pretty pictures and cute puppies, both of which she tweets about @mylaurenhansen.
