Strength of pairs in Canada inspires six-time champions
Duhamel and Radford inspired generation of Canadian skaters to take up discipline
The memory is still fresh, though there is no medal to remind Meagan Duhamel of her first experience at Skate Canada International.
In 2007, she and then pairs partner Craig Buntin finished sixth, which is to say, last.
“I was like, ‘I’m at Skate Canada, I made it, this is incredible.’ I didn’t care that I came last,” Duhamel said during a Thursday interview at Brandt Centre.
“It’s so incredible to imagine the journey from there, through all these years of Skate Canada. It puts all these things in perspective.”
Earned over a decade with longtime partner Eric Radford, “all these things” include six consecutive national championships, with a good shot at seven in January. It includes two gold and two bronze medals at world championships between 2013 and 2016, and a complete set of medals from the past three Grand Prix Finals.
And there is still a chance for an Olympic bauble before they wrap up their competitive careers in 2018.
The goodbye tour starts here this weekend, at their final Skate Canada International. The occasion offers a platform and time to reflect on a career that dragged Canadian pairs skating out of the doldrums and onto podiums once again. Along the way they inspired the next generation of pairs teams and will leave the competitive side of their sport knowing it’s in strong hands.
“Right now there is so much depth,” Duhamel said. “We have three spots at the Olympics and we have four teams that are absolutely worthy of being top eight at the Olympics. And one of those teams is going to have to sit at home. I mean, that’s a terrible feeling. I was on a team that sat at home in 2010 and you don’t want anybody to live through that. That just shows the depth of pairs skating in our country, and I think that’s incredible.”
Lubov Ilyushechkina and Dylan Moscovitch finished sixth, one spot up on Duhamel and Radford, at last year’s world championships, and are in the Skate Canada field this weekend. Julianne Seguin and Charlie Bilodeau, who were 11th at worlds, started their Grand Prix season at the Rostelecom Cup and finished fifth. Kirsten Moore-Towers and Michael Marinaro are headed to the Cup of China next week.
“I think the first year or two that Eric and I were at nationals there were like six teams,” Duhamel said. “I think now we have 10 to 12. There are a lot more singles skaters that are deciding to try pairs skating. I think that’s really exciting for the sport. Where Eric and I trained for eight years, it was like a factory of novice and junior and senior teams coming up.
“The energy becomes infectious. The pairs skating in Montreal is so strong right now, with so many numbers that they actually don’t have the ice time to have this many pairs teams. I think it’s great after all the years Canada didn’t have so many pairs teams.”
For years Duhamel and Radford carried the load, and did it with an intoxicating blend of athleticism and grace. They worked tirelessly to incorporate a throw triple Axel, a throw quad Lutz and finally a throw quad Salchow. Duhamel paid the price in body pain so debilitating that on many training days she couldn’t sit up straight in her car on the ride home. But she did it all again the next day.
“I was always so excited to see if it would get closer the next day, you know,” she said. “Even though I was falling, it was like, ‘Oh, that fall was closer.’ There was always something exciting about those times. When we learned the throw triple Axel and the throw quad Lutz it was the exact same. Even though I was falling we could feel them getting smoother and getting easier.
“It was very painful, but very worth it.”
It took them five weeks of intense training to land the throw quad Salchow, much less time to incorporate the throw triple Axel and the throw quad Lutz.
This year, with one last season in their sights, they didn’t add to the arsenal.
“This summer was so much less stressful because I wasn’t learning some death-defying skill,” she said with a laugh.
Instead, they have shuffled the elements and fine-tuned their long program after a poor outing at the Autumn Classic in Montreal. They come to Regina full of confidence.
“From a training standpoint, we’re in one of the strongest positions we’ve ever been in,” Radford said. “I mean, the last three long programs we’ve done at home have been clean. I don’t think we managed one clean runthrough last season.
“So something has clicked since we made these changes and I think this competition is about making sure we can show that under the pressure.”