Discretion

Re the latest title photo on the blog: The blog's upcoming (use a Scott Moir-type time estimate) photo essay chronicle of Bryce Davison's public journey through the vale of romantic betrayal, anguish and humiliation is a work in progress, and while hunting for a particular screen cap of Jessica Dube, I noticed Tellement Sports' caption beneath its facebook video of Menage a Trois sur la Glace:

Malgré leur rupture amoureuse, Jessica Dubé patine toujours avec Bryce Davison, mais son coeur bat dorénavant pour Scott Moir, l'ancien meilleur ami de Bryce et partenaire de Tessa Virtue. Jessica et Scott sont extrêmement discrets sur leur relation qui n'avait jamais encore été dévoilée publiquement. C'est qu'au-delà du potinage, la situation pose un véritable défi dans un sport où les apparences sont très importantes.

Emphasis mine.

A rudimentary grasp of French will give the gist, but an on-line translation tool produces this:

Despite their break up love, Jessica Dubé always patina with Bryce Davison, but his heart now beats to Scott Moir, Bryce's former best friend and partner Tessa Virtue. Jessica and Scott are extremely secretive about their relationship that had never yet been publicly disclosed. It is that beyond the potinage, the situation is a real challenge in a sport where appearances are very important.

Extremely secretive leaps to mind when recalling Scott and Jessica's discretion during the ultra-appearance conscious run up to the Olympics. Why else would they air dirty triangle laundry nobody knew about until they went to an internet tabloid?

No surprise the fan takeaway from this video exclusive was Bryce was pissed at Scott and a big soap opera was cooking at Skate Canada. It must have sailed over Skate Canada's heads but when a couple of famous figure skaters bellow into a video camera that they're no longer lovers and she's dating another teammate who used to be her partner's best friend, and because of her, her partner/former lover and their teammate/her current lover aren't friends anymore, the 'discretion" message might not stick. The agenda, as observed here before, was so Scott and Jessica would have a rationale for not hanging out with each other at competitions more than necessary, as fans are as always snooping and side-eyeing and might otherwise wonder wtf? That agenda was, understandably, a fail.

But looking at the collage above, which is just a sample of the stuff we were treated to systematically in the lead up to and after the Olympics, remember none of the broadcast networks or print media saw fit to focus on the fact that, at a home Olympics in Canada, the Canadian champion and Olympic gold medalist ice dance male was in a long-standing romantic relationship with his Olympic teammate, the Canadian pairs champion female, who skates with her ex-lover and his former best friend in a very dangerous discipline, and things are notoriously rocky. Would this impact the competition? And what of his win and her disappointment? Anything of interest there?

No. None of that despite Jessica placed dead in the center of Moir-land the night of the free dance, a big ass camera trained on her face.*

The promo for Jess/Bryce was they were best friends who spent all their time together, the promo for Virtue Moir was the usual clusterfuck of they couldn't be closer except that they keep their swimsuit areas to themselves. Sandra Bezic shared that D&D used to be a couple and that's why there was no other lp they could skate to but The Way We Were, as all of us would feel if we'd found ourselves partnered with a sullen ex-boyfriend we'd dumped for someone else on the team thus destroying the friendship between the two men. That would bring out the wistful nostalgia in anyone, especially the dude who was dumped.

I believe we were told Anabelle & Cody were a couple, but nada about Jessica and Scott. When cameras zoomed in on the Moir family after Scott and Tessa skated, Tracy Wilson failed to recognize Jessica, and Tom Hammond ignored her too, choosing to repeatedly identify other Moir family members (and one Zaretsky) as Scott's brother Danny.

How did we facebook fans get so lucky?

And on a different topic, here's an isolate of Scott smooching Jessica (full photo above) as a companion to Jessica's cut-a-bitch isolate a few posts below.

This is a level 4 cheek kiss - "kiss" your "gf" on the cheek without any part of your nose making contact with her face. +3, Scott.

BTW, here's Charlie White:

Charlie & Tanith:

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*ETA:Post-Olympics there was even a print interview with Jessica and Bryce, focusing specifically on the difference between their Olympic outcome and Virtue Moir's. The subject was the likelihood of Virtue Moir retiring versus Dube Davison retiring, the discussion pointed out that Virtue Moir had achieved the ultimate goal while D&D still felt their best was yet to come, and it's always more fulfilling to retire once you'd shown your best. So they were likely to continue, they explained, versus Virtue Moir, whose future was then up in the air. "We didn't win the Olympics, so..." was Jessica's contribution comparing the two teams. It was Bryce who spoke as the person familiar with Tessa and Scott, saying that if you have other goals ("and I know they both do") and have achieved your sport's highest level, it might be tempting to leave at the top. Amazing. The article's focus was VM versus DD, interviewing DD, and never did the journalist tag Jessica as Scott's girlfriend, it was Bryce who offered more of the insider's perspective, and Jessica referring to them only as teammates who'd done better than she and Bryce had done, not that there were sour grapes or anything.