Jamie Sale and David Pelletier wound up in a collapsed heap on the ice after his skate slipped on the final pose of their short program Saturday night in the Olympic pairs skating competition. Then they grinned at each other.
After all, love means never having to say you’re sorry.
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That is the final line of “Love Story,” the tear-jerking 1970 movie about a college student and his dying young girlfriend the Canadians hope to re-enact as a gold-medal performance in Monday’s free skate final. The Oscar-winning music from that film has personal resonance for them–fortunately, with nothing tragic involved.
Sale and Pelletier used “Love Story” three seasons ago, then moved on, winning the world title last season with an interpretation of complex music from the opera “Tristan and Isolde.” They revived “Love Story,” as straightforward as it gets, for the Olympics after the abstract program they used the rest of this season failed to move audiences, although they won all four competitions with it.
“The `Love Story’ program is like an old sweater,” Pelletier said. “You can’t get rid of it because it’s very comfortable.
“When you go out there, it’s a little bit scary. You want to feel comfortable.”
Pelletier can only hope the program hasn’t gone threadbare in the minds of the judges. They already seem predisposed to more classic stuff like “Meditation” from Massenet’s opera “Thais,” which Russians Elena Bereznaia and Anton Sikharulidze are using.
The Russians, who won the short program, are trying to extend to 11 a winning streak compiled by compatriots who skated for the Soviet Union, the Unified Team and now the Russian Federation. The thought of ending that streak is not something Pelletier allows to preoccupy him.
“If I go out there to beat the Russians, I’ll kill myself,” he said. “That is not what competition is all about.
“We knew Elena and Anton had skated great (Saturday), but it didn’t stop us from skating great because we were focused on our own program.”
For Sale and Pelletier, whose partnership began in July 1998, “Love Story” was the breakthrough program.
Their first competitive performance of it at 1999 Skate America dazzled both the crowd and the judges, who placed them first, ahead of then-reigning world champions Bereznaia and Sikharulidze.
Sale has called Pelletier her “skating soul mate.” The relationship soon extended to their lives off the ice, leading to Pelletier’s divorce.
She is the one with the constant smile, but her skating hairdo seems a better measure of the pressures roiling inside. Each of Sale’s hairs strains under the pressure of being pulled flat against her head.
He is the one with the constantly wry expression, as if bemusement were the best way to look at the world. Yet it was Pelletier who exploded after Sale skated poorly at last month’s Canadian championships, leaving him to apologize publicly to his partner.
They had first tried skating together in 1995, but it didn’t work. She was on the verge of quitting the sport when Pelletier, who had had three previous partners, gave her a second chance three years later.
Sale had been to the Olympics in 1994 with another partner, finishing 12th. The end of that partnership led her to try singles. Failing to qualify for the 1996 Canadian nationals in singles left her “at rock bottom, but something inside of me didn’t want to give up. I guess I was just waiting for Dave.”