Canada’s Messing seizes lead at Skate Canada
LAVAL, QUE. Canada’s Keegan Messing is the leader after the men’s singles short program at Skate Canada International.
The 26-year-old, who lives in Anchorage, Alaska, opened with a quadruple toe loop-triple toe loop combination then a triple Axel on his way to a clean program and 95.05 points.
Olympic silver medallist Shoma Uno is second with 88.87 points after a disastrous program that saw him crash on his triple Axel and slide back first into the boards at Place Bell.
South Korean teen Cha JunHwan, who trains in Toronto with Canadian coach Brian Orser, finished just behind Uno with a score of 88.86.
Canada’s Kirsten Moore-Towers and Michael Marinaro were third in the pairs short program, scoring 71.26 points.
And moments after their program to a Leona Lewis version of Roberta Flack’s The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, MooreTowers and Marinaro talked about their new role in the altered postOlympic landscape.
“It’s weird in that we see the opportunity, but we also feel a little bit of responsibility,” Moore-Towers said.
“It was a bit of a mindset issue in the summer. Now we skate for ourselves, we do our absolute best for Canada.”
“To do so we have to focus on ourselves, stay in our lane and do the best we can,” Marinaro said.
We have to focus on ourselves, stay in our lane and do the best we can.
World bronze medallists Vanessa James and Morgan Cipres of France are the leaders with 74.51, while Peng Cheng and Jin Yang of China are second (72.00).
Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford retired after the Pyeongchang Games, while two other Canadian teams — Julianne Seguin and Charlie Bilodeau, second at the Olympic trials, and Dylan Moscovitch and Lubov Ilyushechkina — split up.