Olympic Ice Dancing: Vancouver Ice Dancing (Figure Skating) To Seed by USA and Canada – Today, the medal event in the sport of ice dancing will take place in Vancouver for the 21st Winter Olympics. Teams for fifteen nations are vying to win medals in this sport but the strong contenders for the medla wins are hosts Canada, USA and Russia.

The ice dancing competition has three segments – compulsory dance in which team from Russia is leading in scores, in original dance it is Canada who leads the scores. At the end it is USA figures in the top three in both segments while the third segment free dance will be performed today.

American ice dancers Meryl Davis and Charlie White put themselves in prime position to make history. But first they will have to win a showdown with Canada and beat their training partners.

Davis and White were in second place after the original dance Sunday, 2.60 points behind Canadians Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, who took the lead with a sultry performance to flamenco music and left reigning world champions Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin trailing in third place. Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto, Olympic silver medalists in 2006, are in fourth place going into Monday’s free dance.

On MSNBC, the US men’s ice hockey team defeated host nation Canada, 5-3, on the strength of two goals by Brian Rafalski and 42 saves by goaltender of Ryan Miller. The win was Team USA’s third, earning them the top spot in Group A, and bye in the quarterfinals.

NBC primetime joined the game for its conclusion. Host Bob Costas, daytime host Al Michaels and Olympic correspondent Cris Collinsworth offered postgame commentary. Michaels and Collinsworth were at the arena.

The Americans and Canadians want to make this a “North American Olympics” for ice dancing, long dominated by Russian or Soviet couples. Since dance became an Olympic sport in 1976, Russian or Soviet couples have won all but two of the gold medals.

Neither American nor Canadian couples have won Olympic gold in ice dancing. The Russians could leave the Olympics without a gold medal in figure skating for the first time in 50 years.