Tessa Virtue Was 'Humbled' To Receive A Top Canadian Award & Got Nostalgic About Scott Moir

Olympic skater Tessa Virtue is getting sentimental about her former partnership and career with Scott Moir.

The athletic duo started skating together when they were just kids and went on to win five Olympic medals together. Now they're being recognized with an incredible Canadian honour.

Virtue and Moir were inducted into the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame at a ceremony in Gatineau, Quebec on Thursday and it's caused Virtue to take a step back and reflect.

In an interview on Friday from the airport, Virtue expressed how grateful she was for the recognition.

"It's an incredible honour to be recognized by your peers in such a meaningful and significant way is so humbling and rewarding," she told Narcity.

"It's interesting Scott and I were reflecting in that it's not one of those goals you ever set. We wanted to win and we wanted to try new programs and experiment and you know, kind of make our mark on the international scene and yet we never thought about awards and accolades like Canada's Sports Hall of Fame."

Leading up to the ceremony, Virtue shared photos and videos on her Instagram of her and Moir and their different "eras" during their 20+ year-long partnership.

"It's been such a fun-filled week of reflection and kind of taking a walk down memory lane," she said.

"Jumping back into that world with Scott was just extraordinary."

When we asked her to choose her favourite era, Virtue said two really stuck out to her.

"When I look at the two of us at seven and nine, starting out with such innocence and naivety and this purity of our approach to sport there's just something so beautiful about seeing that," she explained.

"I have a really soft spot in my heart for those young kids who had no idea what was ahead of them."

However, she said their time at the PyeongChang Olympics in 2018, during which the skaters became the most decorated figure skates in Olympic history, is a career highlight.

"The PyeongChang portion of our career, it's hard to compete with that," she told Narcity.

"Not only because of how things transpired, but I think more importantly, just the autonomy we had. The team we had surrounding us it really felt like we finally found our rhythm of optimizing performance and tapping into that potential."

Since then, many Canadians (myself included) were sad to hear they were retiring in 2019.

However, Virtue says she hasn't hung up her skates and she is still involved in some capacity in the sport she's always loved.

The skating icon mentors a team that recently competed at the Olympics and meets with them weekly in Montreal.

"It's more strategy-based, mental performance, structuring their team focusing on energy management, so it's maybe in a different capacity, but I love staying involved that way."

The Canadian ice skater currently works for Deloitte and says she recently even got to incorporate her love of sports when she worked on a project that created "safe sports principles across Canada."

"I was sort of chuckling because I thought, well, what a unique way of coming at these issues from a very corporate standpoint," she told Narcity.

"I'm definitely still involved in sport, it might not look as maybe the trajectory people might have guessed, but I'm certainly still involved."

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.