SM: What inspired you to become an ice dancer?
Belbin: I had always been a performer at heart and once I was old enough to really appreciate ice dancing for the performance element that it offers, I felt like that was where I needed to be. When young skaters start out, it’s easy to be attracted to just the excitement of jumps and spins and think that’s the only thing worth any value in skating. But once I understood ice dancing and all its complexity and the technically demanding aspect of it, along with the performance, [I was hooked]. Ultimately, it was just a matter of what discipline allowed me to be most creative and most myself, and that was ice dancing.

Shortly after Belbin decided to switch from singles ice-skating to ice dancing, she and her coach started their search for a partner. After a two-hour tryout with Agosto, the two skaters became a pair. They, along with their families and coaches, debated on how best they could bring the two together geographically. In the end, it was decided that Tanith should move to the United States.

SM: How has your career affected your personal life? What kind of sacrifices have you had to make?
Belbin: A lot of the sacrifices were made by my family. I will forever be indebted for what they’ve given to me. But personally [the sacrifice was], obviously, just moving when I did from Canada and kind of uprooting the life that I knew. As close as the United States and Canada are, they are very different. So, it was a switch for me to come to Northville in Michigan—which is a very upper class, wealthy neighborhood—and to be in that atmosphere and to be struggling so much financially because of the sacrifices we’d made.