USA Wins Ice Dancing for First Time

Meryl Davis and Charlie White take the gold
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 17, 2014 3:25 PM CST
USA Wins Ice Dancing for First Time
Meryl Davis and Charlie White of the United States won gold.   (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

US speedskaters aren't doing so hot, but other Americans strapping on skates at Sochi are making up for it. Today, Meryl Davis and Charlie White won the first-ever gold for USA in ice dancing, reports CBS News. They beat the last gold-medal winners, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir of Canada, by a relatively wide margin of 4.5 points. (The couples train together.) "It still hasn't sunk in yet," says Davis, 27. Adds White, 26, of their mistake-free skate today: "That in itself justified 17 years of hard work."

The win is all the more impressive because, in ice dance, Americans "weren't even afterthoughts a decade ago," observes USA Today. In a less delicate ice-skating sport, the US women's hockey team advanced to the gold medal game against Canada with a 6-1 win over Sweden, reports AP. That's the matchup pretty much everyone expected before the Olympics began, and if previous games between these two very unfriendly rivals are a guide, this one should be entertaining even for non-hockey fans. The game is at noon Eastern on Thursday. (More 2014 Sochi Olympics stories.)

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