Canadian duo finds silver lining as run ends
Duhamel, Radford pleased with second-place skate after year of pairs dominance
The down side: A yearlong utter dominance has come to an end for Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford.
The up side: Sometimes silver shines brighter than gold.
Second-place gloss at the Grand Prix figure skating final in Barcelona was no disappointment for the reigning world champions from Canada and defending champions in this event.
They climbed up from third after Thursday’s short program competition and were generally pleased with the display. Indeed, they felt far better about the whole rendition than they had a fortnight earlier when winning the NHK trophy in Japan, their second assignment on the Grand Prix circuit, and a second gold en route to the final.
So the impressive streak of nine straight international victories stretching back to the fall of 2014 has been halted. Yet they still finished with a season’s best overall score of 216.17, while the Russian duo of Ksenia Stolbova and Fedor Klimov avenged their 2014 final loss to the Canadians with a flawless free skate that earned triumphant 229.44 marks.
“We were bound to lose eventually,” a realistic Duhamel told the Star afterwards. “We can’t just keep winning forever. We’re not machines, we’re human beings.
“Had we not skated well it would feel like a failure. But when the music stopped, Eric and I were very happy and very proud of our performance. We won the NHK trophy just two weeks ago and we didn’t feel good when we finished the performance.”
All the elements — with the exception of a small step-out on the throw quad Lutz — were more comfortably executed, with better flow throughout the routine, performed to Adele’s “Hometown Glory.” That in itself was an achievement of mind over matter after a rare fall — the first time in six years together — on a triple throw in their short program just 24 hours earlier.
“We had an uncharacteristic fall in the short, so to come back out and do a strong long program is something that we’re very proud of,” said Radford. “We have a lot of room to improve and a lot that we can take forward with us into the second half of the season.”
The couple earned Level 4 marks on all their elements except for the twist and the death spiral. Only once in their career have they received Level 4 on the twist so that wasn’t unexpected. But the death spiral is a highly difficult signature move that’s always been generously scored. “We’re not sure what went wrong there, we’ll have to watch the video,” said Duhamel.
She also had to fight hard to hold on to her “messy” landing on a tripledouble-double toe combination. “But at NHK I didn’t even try the combo, so that was a step better.”
Otherwise it was a solid technical acquittal.
“The performance aspect of our skate was strong as well, which was a goal we had at this competition,” said Radford. “We landed a throw quad, we did good side-by-side jumps. Nothing was as perfectly clean as we know we can do it.”
Performance aspect — selling it emotionally and artistically — has become a focus with the pair. “Some of our major criticism has been how we’ve always been technical skaters and just athletic skaters,” said Radford. “We’re always striving to push our artistic side, make everything more fluid and just make it more relatable to the audience. Try to make our connection to one another more obvious.
“That’s something we’ve been working really hard at. Sometimes you have performances where it flows and it comes naturally. And sometimes it just doesn’t. You can see it in a skater’s face when they’re thinking a lot. This was a strong performance where we did our best to move the judges and the audience.”
By the Canadian championships in January, the team might be ready to include a throw quad Lutz into their repertoire. But that striking trick has been hard to integrate into the program so was left out of the choreography in competition. Further, trying to bridle the explosive manoeuvre had impaired the solidity of the throw triple Lutz.
“The technique between the two is quite different,” said Radford. “Also, just the mentality — the mental setup — of the element is different. I think that working on the throw quad has affected the throw triple. When we get home we need to come up with specific technical techniques for both. Because we can’t work on the throw quad and then apply that technique to the triple.
“It’s something that you can only realize after you go through and make the mistakes. I think it’s something we’ll figure out in the new year and for the second half of the season.”
At the very least, the Grand Prix final provided the team with a rivals preview for the worlds in March, noted Radford.
“It was a really strong field here. At the top of the podium, there were two throw quads landed and a tripletriple combination, which is sort of unprecedented in pairs. Everybody has improved since last season. It just makes the sport more exciting for everyone.”
Canada got a robust performance from the young Quebec team of Julianne Seguin and Charlie Bilodeau, who qualified for the final in their first season on the senior circuit, finishing fourth with a personal best of 200.98.
“We are happy with what we did even though we made a couple of mistakes,” said the 19-year-old Seguin. “One of our goals was to break the 200-point barrier. It really means a lot and shows we’ve reached another level.”
In ice dance, the defending champions from Canada, Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje, are in first place after the short program, in which they skated to a waltz and polka by Strauss.
“We felt great this whole week,” Weaver said. “Today we skated our short dance with grace and we felt very comfortable in front of this crowd. We’re happy to be leading going into (Saturday’s) free dance.”
Poje: “We’re looking forward to debuting new costumes in our free dance and trying to bring new life to it.”