After A False Start, Chemistry

By Jodie Morse

One day last winter, before they had won a world championship or appeared on a single box of Cheerios, Jamie Sale and David Pelletier went to Toronto to meet with American sports agent Craig Fenech. He took one look at the pair--his dimpled, boy-band looks, her glossy brown eyes--and said, "I'm going to make you guys household names." He had yet even to see them on ice.

By now, each second of the pair's recent existence has been indelibly pressed into Olympic lore. Thanks to breathless press coverage, we have even learned how they take their coffee (he likes a latte, she, a latte with vanilla syrup). Less known is the back story of how they found each other and made it to Salt Lake City. It begins a continent and several worlds away. Sale grew up in the western province of Alberta, strapped on her first pair of skates before her second birthday and at age 8 announced to her mother that she was Olympic material; Pelletier played hockey in a small town in French-speaking Quebec and as a child thought figure skating too girlie.

Pairs skating is a bit like an episode of Sex and the City; there are many first dates and false starts, but few lead to serious commitment. Sale, 24, and Pelletier, 27, have cycled through four partners between them (Sale placed 12th in pairs in the 1994 Olympics) and even dabbled in singles skating. They first tried teaming up in 1996 but nothing came of it. Two years later, both their careers had stalled: he was selling beer and hot dogs in a Montreal stadium for $10 an hour, and she was waitressing at an Edmonton coffee shop. While the rest of the skating universe was still buzzing about the Nagano Olympics, Pelletier flew to Edmonton for a second try, and the two clicked. The minute Pelletier got back home, the phone rang, and it was Sale. "We put our cards on the table and decided, 'Let's get started,'" recalls Pelletier.

They have hardly taken a breather since. Undefeated internationally since November 2000, Sale and Pelletier edged out the Russian pair Yelena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze last spring in Vancouver to became world champions. In that matchup the Russians skated a nearly clean program while Sale singled a double Axel. But with the Russians coming off a weak season, no one raised a fuss. This year Sale and Pelletier trotted out Orchid, a new high-concept routine (he played the stem, she the blooming flower) but on the eve of the Olympics settled on Love Story, based on the 1970 love-and-death melodrama, which first enchanted judges back in 1999.

Their off-the-ice partnership is more suited to today's silver screen. Pelletier divorced his wife and last year moved in with Sale. And though they decline to discuss their romantic relationship, fans have caught flashes of it. After Sale bobbled at the recent Canadian championships, Pelletier had a full-blown tantrum that left Sale in tears. He later told the press he owed her an apology.

"I liked my life the way it was before all this happened," said Pelletier between a call from Canada Prime Minister Jean Chretien and a Tonight show appearance. "I can't wait to go back to it." But as of last week, each turn of their love story will now play out on a wider stage.

--By Jodie Morse. Reported by Alice Park/Salt Lake City and Steven Frank and Leigh Anne Williams/Toronto

With reporting by Alice Park/Salt Lake City and Steven Frank and Leigh Anne Williams/Toronto