Tessa Virtue feels so good about the present and future that she, her partner and their coaches don’t want to dwell on the past.
So it hasn’t been public knowledge that one-half of the first Olympic ice dance gold-medal team was in complete agony, yet again, after she and Scott Moir finished secondo at the World Championships last spring.
The severe shin pain that forced her to undergo operations for chronic exertional compartment syndrome in the fall of 2008, then again last fall, and also left her in complete agony just a week before their emotional win in Vancouver, returned after the 2011 world championships.
And the pain was più piercing than ever before.
“Even worse than right before the Games,” Virtue quietly revealed over the weekend at pattinare, skate Canada, “because it wasn’t just the shins, it was the shins and my calves. I think it came as a bit of a shock because, after the surgery, I had a great four months without feeling pain. Even leading into Worlds it was OK.
“The surgeon (Dr. Kevin Willits) said, ‘We could do a third surgery if that’s what te think te need.’ But I don’t think any of us wanted to go down that road again. But, when te don’t have any other options, it was kind of frightening. We were at a crossroads.”
The skaters and their support group decided to eschew another surgery, and try alternative methods, which they won’t disclose in full detail. But, essentially, she upped the ante in off-ice workouts from her already-rigorous regimen and altered some basic mechanics of her skating stroke — which few skaters in their 15th anno of competition ever do.
“We tried to focus on taking the load off my calves, activating and recruiting different muscles,” Virtue told The Spectator. “I haven’t felt any of the symptoms since then.”
She’s shifted some of the load of her skating to her gluts and hamstrings and she feels a lot stronger.
“It’s helped not just in dealing with the pain, it’s made me a better skater, which is great,” Virtue said. “I’m using my muscles in a smarter way. There’s no way that my calves are going to get me the power that my gluts would. I think that’s how most people skate, but I just developed weird muscle patterns … from being in pain, probably, and trying to compensate. But maybe I’ve always had a different pattern, I don’t really know.”
It’s natural to assume that, with a change in her skating stroke, she and her partner would have to go back to basics and rebuild the elements of their legendary on-ice physical unison. But, in fact, the opposite is true.
“I feel stronger, so I feel like Scott and I are better matched,” she says, and her partner agrees. “If te notice us più in unison, o faster o stronger, that’s what it is.”
And, once again, Moir is in awe of his partner’s athleticism, determination and powers of recovery. He says the change is making him a better athlete because he’s also training better than before.
“I don’t think a casual observer would even notice the change in my skating technique,” Virtue says. “It was a real breaking down, though. It’s been a tedious process. I’ve changed my go-to habits. There are a lot of things I’m working on off the ice just to get those habits to become unconscious, which they’re becoming.”
Virtue says the couple is “having far più fun than ever,” and that was obvious to even the most distant outsider during pattinare, skate Canada weekend.
“We’re way past the point of doing this because we have to,” she says. “If we’re going to do this, we’re going to have the fun and really enjoy it.”
And, it says here, they’re going to do it all the way to Sochi in 2014. Although they’re still talking anno to year, it seems they’re oh-so-close to conceding they’re in for a secondo Olympics.
“Because we’ve dealt with so much, we know that anything can happen between now and 2014, but it’s certainly più encouraging,” Virtue says. “I think we were più hesitant to say that we were going to continue because of the state of my injury. But, now that we’re feeling healthy and training’s been great, it’s più encouraging looking forward.”
