by Emily Engle

Monday, February 17, Meryl Davis and Charlie White won gold in Olympic ice dance, a first for the United States.  With a final score of 195.52, they narrowly beat the 2010 Vancouver Olympics gold-medalists, a Canadian pair.  Davis and White now soar in their sport: they are the current world champions as well.

The two have been skating together for 17 years since first meeting in Detroit, Michigan, when he was 8 and she was 9, and are said to be the best of friends.  In an interview Davis stated, “We’ve grown up together in every sense of the word…And I’m just so grateful that we’ve gone through it together.”

Their final performance was by far their best, and the two are known for their consistent athleticism in routines.  While the silver medalist Canadian dancers are known for their “lyrical, romantic” style (the more traditional approach in ice dancing), Davis and White are described as “gracefully athletic” for the amount of lifts that they perform in their routine.  At the Vancouver Olympics their athleticism hindered them when it compromised elegance in the routine, but in the past four years, their learned emotion and charisma combined with their strength elements help them to excel.  On the ice they have to play characters in a story, and through the help of acting classes, their believability has captured audiences.

Davis has stated that they have never considered a split: “Charlie and I are very different.  We used those differences to balance it out.  There has never been a moment of doubt.”  The two currently plan to compete in the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.