Ice Dancing

SCHEDULE * Compulsory dance, 5:15 p.m. Wednesday, Staples Center (two compulsory dances, each worth 10% of the final score). * Original dance, 8:30 p.m. Thursday, Staples Center (worth 30% of the final score). * Free dance, noon Saturday, Staples Center (worth 50% of the final score). The U.S. can send two ice-dancing couples to the Salt Lake City Winter Games. * FAVORITES NAOMI LANG Allegan, Mich. and PETER TCHERNYSHEV St. Petersburg, Russia * Lang and Tchernyshev are three-time defending U.S.

Meryl Davis and Charlie White made the inside of a medium-sized arena in Ontario feel as if it were a ballroom in Vienna. Davis and White, the world champion ice dancing team from the United States, flew across the surface with elegance even as they were performing almost flawlessly, combining intricate footwork with lifts that need power and strength until the crowd at Citizens Business Bank Arena came to its feet. Skating to the music of Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss, Davis and White earned a commanding win in the ice dancing competition at Skate America on Saturday, scoring 178.07 points in their first major meet of the year.

Even with the non-manly sport of ice dancing dominating NBC's Monday night prime-time coverage (sprinkled in with a little men's aerials and some snippets of women's hockey), the Olympics out-drew a two-hour first-run episode of "The Bachelor" on ABC and a new episode of Fox's "24" (Jack Bauer might want to try using a skate blade as a secret weapon). The U.S. didn't win any gold medals to draw in extra viewers, but 21 million were watching the Olympics versus 11.2 million for "The Bachelor" during the 8- to-10 p.m. block and 8.7 million for the one-hour "24," according to NBC and Nielsen Media Research.

Ice dancing will be the main attraction at Skate America in Ontario this weekend. The days when Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan drew American eyes to figure skating for a rivalry turned ugly, or when Michelle Kwan, Tara Lipinski and Sarah Hughes did it by winning Olympic and world championship gold medals, those days seem long gone. Meryl Davis and Charlie White are the only reigning American figure skating world champions, and the ice dancing couple is the headline act for Skate America, which kicks off the Grand Prix season Friday at Citizens Business Bank Arena.

Only this is certain about the ice dance competition at the World Figure Skating Championships, which begin today at Staples Center with the compulsory dance: the injury-induced withdrawal of 2008 winners Isobel Delobel and Olivier Schoenfelder of France guarantees a new champion will be crowned. But it's not safe to assume last year's runners-up, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir of Canada, will move up. Virtue had surgery on both shins six months ago, and the duo lost the Four Continents title to U.

Scott Moir of Canada is a big hockey fan. He trains every day at the same rink outside Detroit as Charlie White of the United States, who also is a big hockey fan. Both had to avoid paying more attention to the U.S.-Canada men's hockey game than their own skating in the ice-dancing competition Sunday night. "Are we going to talk about that?" Moir said, groaning. He had a hard time pulling himself away from a television showing the game. "I finally stopped because I had to focus," Moir said.

Know what I like? Ice dancing -- the elegance, the artistry, the physical contact. I used to express myself by cursing politicians on TV or swearing at other drivers. Now, ice dancing has come into my life. Ice dancing is the sort of sport Barry Manilow might've invented. It belongs in Las Vegas, except it would all probably melt. Then it would be water dancing, which doesn't sound so bad. Just imagine what NBC would do with a "skin cam." Right away you're probably thinking, "Oh, this dude's writing about ice dancing, he's going to make fun of it."

In a figure skating discipline where results seem frozen by past performances, where even the new judging system has had minimal effect on the glacial pace of change at the top, what happened Thursday was like the impact of a century of global warming. The hierarchy in U.S. ice dance, as solid for most of the past decade as the polar ice cap had been, appears to be melting. That was the most logical interpretation of the core sample judges at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships provided by placing Meryl Davis and Charlie White ahead of Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto in the compulsory dance phase of the competition.

Ice dancing will be the main attraction at Skate America in Ontario this weekend. The days when Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan drew American eyes to figure skating for a rivalry turned ugly, or when Michelle Kwan, Tara Lipinski and Sarah Hughes did it by winning Olympic and world championship gold medals, those days seem long gone. Meryl Davis and Charlie White are the only reigning American figure skating world champions, and the ice dancing couple is the headline act for Skate America, which kicks off the Grand Prix season Friday at Citizens Business Bank Arena.

It used to be that the United States had two left feet in ice dancing. Suddenly, it's the one figure-skating discipline in which Team USA probably can count on a medal at the world championships that began Tuesday and the next Olympics. "That's exciting for us," said Ben Agosto, part of the leading U.S. ice dance team with Tanith Belbin. "For a long time, ice dancing was in the shadows, and now it's coming into the spotlight."

Last year, just before Christmas, the manager of a city ice rink called Doreen Denny on her day off. At age 68, Denny still taught ice skating five days a week. The manager insisted she come in right away. His voice sounded odd. "There's some crazy lady here who says she has something that belongs to you," he said, trying to sound mysterious. "It's something from the '50s." "The '50s?" Denny sputtered in her clipped British accent. "I wasn't even here in the '50s." But she was. Fifty-one years before, as a wispy teenager from Twickenham, England, she and her partner had skated flawlessly for their country at the storied Broadmoor World Arena to capture the 1959 ice dancing world championship.

Even with the non-manly sport of ice dancing dominating NBC's Monday night prime-time coverage (sprinkled in with a little men's aerials and some snippets of women's hockey), the Olympics out-drew a two-hour first-run episode of "The Bachelor" on ABC and a new episode of Fox's "24" (Jack Bauer might want to try using a skate blade as a secret weapon). The U.S. didn't win any gold medals to draw in extra viewers, but 21 million were watching the Olympics versus 11.2 million for "The Bachelor" during the 8- to-10 p.m. block and 8.7 million for the one-hour "24," according to NBC and Nielsen Media Research.

Could you imagine Joe Torre managing the Dodgers and Angels? Or Canada's hockey coach, Mike Babcock, behind the bench for both the Canadian and U.S. teams? That's the situation in the ice dance, where the top two finishers, one from Canada and one from the United States, share a pair of Russian émigré coaches and the same training rink in Canton, Mich. Such arrangements are not unusual in figure skating, where one coach often trains rivals in the same discipline.

Scott Moir of Canada is a big hockey fan. He trains every day at the same rink outside Detroit as Charlie White of the United States, who also is a big hockey fan. Both had to avoid paying more attention to the U.S.-Canada men's hockey game than their own skating in the ice-dancing competition Sunday night. "Are we going to talk about that?" Moir said, groaning. He had a hard time pulling himself away from a television showing the game. "I finally stopped because I had to focus," Moir said.

Know what I like? Ice dancing -- the elegance, the artistry, the physical contact. I used to express myself by cursing politicians on TV or swearing at other drivers. Now, ice dancing has come into my life. Ice dancing is the sort of sport Barry Manilow might've invented. It belongs in Las Vegas, except it would all probably melt. Then it would be water dancing, which doesn't sound so bad. Just imagine what NBC would do with a "skin cam." Right away you're probably thinking, "Oh, this dude's writing about ice dancing, he's going to make fun of it."

Will Russia's anger over Evgeni Plushenko's loss in the men's figure-skating competition have an effect on the ice dance results? That question will hang in the air until Monday, when the skaters do the free dance in an event that began with compulsories Friday. If world champions Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin do not win, Russia will leave the Olympics without a skating gold medal for the first time since 1960, since its women won't even get near the podium. Even worse: A 12-Olympics win streak in pairs ended with a crash when no Russian team won a medal.

Meryl Davis and Charlie White made the inside of a medium-sized arena in Ontario feel as if it were a ballroom in Vienna. Davis and White, the world champion ice dancing team from the United States, flew across the surface with elegance even as they were performing almost flawlessly, combining intricate footwork with lifts that need power and strength until the crowd at Citizens Business Bank Arena came to its feet. Skating to the music of Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss, Davis and White earned a commanding win in the ice dancing competition at Skate America on Saturday, scoring 178.07 points in their first major meet of the year.

Skating for the first time in the U.S. figure skating championships, Russian Gorsha Sur joined with his partner, Renee Roca of Colorado Springs, Colo., to win the favor of the judges Tuesday in the America West Arena in the compulsories of the ice dancing competition. Sur, a Muscovite who defected to the United States in 1990, and Roca, a 1986 U.S. ice dancing champion, have been skating together professionally for three years, but this is their first national competition.

MEN'S SUPER-G Miller and Ligety are U.S. hopefuls Europeans have won every installment of the Olympic super-giant slalom since its addition to the program in 1988, and have several leading candidates for gold in 2010. Didier Cuche of Switzerland is the defending world champion and Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway was last season's World Cup champion. The U.S. has won only one medal in this event: Tommy Moe with a silver at the 1994 Lillehammer Games. Bode Miller and Ted Ligety are the top U.S. competitors.

In honor of the Valentine's Day Olympic debut of the two U.S. pairs figure skating teams Sunday, we offer them our best candy hearts wishes. Love you. Be mine. You rock. Oops. Wrong hearts. Look out! Get up! Oh no! Traditionally, American pairs teams do Valentine's Day like Cupid does clothes. A country filled with some of the greatest individual male and female ice athletes in the world just cannot figure out a way to put the two together long enough to stay thawed.