Figure Skating

Have you grown weary of shipping every possible character pairing from every CW show? Take a leaf from the internet’s book and consider shipping figure skating pairs instead. One key difference between the two: figure skating pairs are seasoned athletes working with their professional partners, so don’t, like, publish detailed fanfic about them like you would about Betty and Veronica. But, as The Ringer pointed out Tuesday , it’s hard to deny the fun of shipping two extremely hot people performing incredible feats on international television.

First, let’s turn our attention to Chinese pairs skaters Sui Wenjing and Han Cong, who enraptured Twitter on Wednesday with their short program set to “Hallelujah. The two are obviously incredible actors as well as athletes, so it’s not that hard for the brain to catch the ferry into Ship City.

That same year at the Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria, Ice Dancing was introduced for the first time and the British skater John Curry took Gold in the men’s event Jayne met Phil Christensen, an American from Chicago and Chris began dating Isabelle Duchesnay. Within a year, both couples would become engaged.

We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. To learn more or opt-out, read our Cookie Policy. Ice dance is about selling romance. Olympic gold medalists Virtue and Moir are brilliant marketers.

The duo won Olympic gold for the second time on Monday night skating a sensual routine set to music from Moulin Rouge. This is super cute and super lovely but also if any of you hugged anybody like that anywhere near me I would feel super weird and make fun of you both pic. The off-ice relationships of skaters have fueled media interest for years, and the public ownership of these debates often overshadows whatever the real-life couples at the center might have to say about it.

Why is everyone so obsessed with ice skating romances? But the construction of those performances, and our reaction to them, says a lot about all of us. In fandom, rooting for two characters to become a successful couple is called shipping.