Ain't No Mountain High Enough

They're five steps that should be the hardest of all to climb.
But if Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir keep this up, the rising Canadian ice dance stars just might indeed by ready to conquer them all in one mighty leap.
That noise you heard Sunday at HomeSense Skate Canada was the sound of jaws dropping all around Pepsi Colisee at the astonishing sight they'd witnessed. Virtue and Moir literally blew away the field with a free dance performance than left them a whopping 25.5 points ahead of silver medallists Anna Cappellini and Luca Lanotte of Italy.
The young Canadians might have been the only ones unimpressed by that feat.
"The point gap, for us, isn’t really that big a deal,” said Moir, 20, of Ilderton, Ont. "We don’t think about it too much.”
Truth be told, these two confess they're not really big on the numbers game. But in this case, their paint a pretty impressive picture. Virtue and Moir's overall total (197.07) is nearly 13 points higher than their previous personal best. The score (99.63) for that lovely free dance, skated to music from the 1964 French musical, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (a favourite in these parts, I've been told), is better than the number Virtue and Moir recorded en route to a sixth-place finish in their world championships debut in March in Tokyo.
All of this, naturally, has been cause for excitement among the Canadian skating fraternity. Skate Canada CEO William Thompson, a former international judge, called Virtue and Moir's total score a rarity this early in the season. It also has him thinking a world title in 2008 in Gothenburg, Sweden, is "realistic" to start considering.
Even if Virtue and Moir aren't — at least not yet.
"That might be slightly ambitious," said Virtue, 18, of London, Ont., who couldn't help smiling at the mere mention of the thought. "But I think everyone competes to win. That’s in our heads, but whether it’s this year or a few years down the road, we’re training for that.”
Given this couple's track record, we'd bet on the former.
And more than just a couple of bucks.