In Memory: Jamie Salé and David Pelletier

Wait, who are they? They died?

Sigh. No, my friends, Salé and Pelletier are alive still. It is rather the heart of my eleven-year old self which has sadly perished. Farewell, heart. When my biographers look back to discover the point at which my heart vanished and any ideals of true love were crushed, they will surely decide that this moment was the turning point (yes, I will have biographers, and yes, I still had a heart until this point. Hush, all of you, I'm in mourning).

Yesterday I was made aware of the fact that Jamie Salé and David Pelletier (otherwise known as the Canadian pairs team from the Olympics who may or may not have been robbed of the gold medal, depending on the state of mind of one Marie-Reine Le Gougne, although either way they were given a set of gold medals) had filed for divorce.

This was not news to me or to anyone else who follows the skating world closely. Rumors have been swirling for quite some time (with good reason, as it appears the couple separated 18 months ago), but particularly since the Olympics. That said, I was perfectly content to deny, deny, deny. The 11-year old inside of me couldn't bear the thought of an end to such a perfect union.

I first discovered the two at 1999 Skate America when they debuted their now-famous Love Story program (that link is to a performance of the same program from two years later--it doesn't have the raw energy the '99 Skate American performance had, but it'll do). It was quite the performance, and Jamie and David went on to have an almost dream season until they just barely missed the podium at the World Championships when Jamie had a meltdown on her side-by-side jumps. It was a downer ending to the season, but they rebounded the next year with an even better program (in my opinion) to Tristan & Isolde (link is to the best performance they had of it all season).

It was during the 2000-2001 season that I really and truly became a fan of the two, and it didn't hurt for my romantic middle school self that there were various articles confirming that they were a romantic item. These rumors had started the year before, but apparently I was too young then to pay as much attention as I do now to skating rumors. Maybe I had more of a life then. Regardless. A skating team? Who had skated to, not one, but two romantic pieces of music for their long programs? Who were young and charismatic and good looking? And even better, David had a French accent! Sa-woooon. Clearly there was nothing not to love about this team, and if David wasn't going to fall in love with me, then I guess it was okay that he fell in love with Jamie. They won the World Championships in 2001, and I squealed gleefully in front of my computer screen, as there wasn't live coverage of it in the US, so I was following along online.

I could tell you about everything that followed--the coaching changes, the Orchid program that they totally should not have dumped, and some rumored trouble in paradise at the 2002 Canadian Championships, but I'm pretty sure none of you care about that, so we'll skip to that whole Salt Lake City Olympic-sized fiasco in 2002. Overnight, my favorite skating team was suddenly all over the newspapers, getting interviewed right and left, and suddenly people decided to give them another gold medal. When they announced that they would be retiring from competitive skating shortly after all this, I was seriously bummed, and thus ended my brief love affair with Jamie and David.

I still, however, followed their pro skating. I met them when they came into town, and I even got to see them skate live (which I had been trying but failing to do for several years). They eventually got married and had a son, and though by then a more realistic 17 years old, I thought this was all the proof I needed that love was true and fate had a hand in everything and we would all live happily ever after.

Sigh.

It would appear that none of this is true, for the two have parted ways. What with the rumors of cheating on Dave's part, I can no longer even dream of falling in love with a blue-eyed, figure skating, hockey playing, French accented man. And thus, with this news, my 11-year old self dies.

I leave you all with a fluff piece from happier days.