Chapter 170: Finale

Monday night, the Ice Dance finals, the free skate.

Amy and Ryan defeated Courtney and Evan by the slightest of margins to win the battle for fifth place.

Then, the top four couples took the ice for the warm-up. Sophia and Warren would be skating last. They ran through some footwork and warmed up, then stepped off the ice. They went backstage, but in range of a TV, so they could watch the other couples skate.

The Canadians skated excellently. They got top marks and a standing ovation from their home country crowd.

The Russians were just OK, and came nowhere near to the Canadians. Sophia, in fact, said to Warren, "Amy and Ryan should've beat that. Courtney and Evan, too. That was weak."

"Ah, well, you know how it goes," Warren laughed.

Then came the Brits. They were good, but not as good as the Canadians.

So, it was all up to Warren and Sophia. The medal winners were set. (Sophia and Warren would have to finish the free dance lower then seventh to not win a medal at all, which wasn't going to happen.) And the Canadians were higher than the Brits. The final color of the medals would be decided by the Kellehers.

"Ready?" Warren asked Sophia as they waited to take the ice.

"All ready already," Sophia laughed. "It's been a long road."

"It certainly has."

"We can do this. We can win this thing," Sophia declared.

"Yes, we can. We're the best ice dancers in the world. Let's go prove it."

"Damn straight."

They took the ice to thunderous applause. They moved to the center of the ice, to their starting position, and waited for the music.

Warren was dressed in all white. He was wearing a white sweater vest-with black and red trim at the v-neck--over a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and white pants. He was also wearing a white hat. Sophia was wearing a blue dress with 'wings' on the sleeves that fluttered when she skated. It was a precise reproduction of the costumes that Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds wore during the 'dance on the soundstage' scene of Singing In The Rain.

The music started, the opening passage to the song Singing In The Rain, complete with Gene Kelly's doo-n-doo-doo's. The Kellehers started simply, with some side-by-side steps with arms linked, into a spin.

25 seconds in, the music shifted--to You Were Meant For Me, the same music used by Kelly and Reynolds in that soundstage dance scene. It was contrary to ice dance convention to have the 'slow section' this early in the program--but Warren and Sophia never let themselves be ruled by ice dance convention. This section was a little over a minute long, and was a tribute to the sustained romanticism of the original movie scene. It was gorgeous and still complex.

The complexity was quickly escalated with the next section of music, the brutally fast Moses. They started out with their side by side footwork, which was fast, powerful, and difficult--and a treat for the audience. It was fun and frisky, and the crowd responded. They continued through the Moses section of music, working in a couple difficult lifts amongst the snappy footwork.

With almost two minutes left in the program, the music shifted again, back to Singing In The Rain. This time it was the end, the sustained instrumental to which Gene Kelly does most of his staggering dance solo in the movie. Warren and Sophia, of course, did it not as a solo, but as a duet. Even so, they tried their hardest to be as faithful to the mood of the Kelly piece as they could.