Duhamel, Radford dreaming of gold

Two-time world champions say the sky’s the limit

REGINA— It’s the one title Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford are missing, but one they’d stopped dreaming was even possible.

Olympic champion. Duhamel’s no longer afraid to say it.

Canada’s two-time world pairs champion climbed out of a yearlong rut by winning their fourth straight — but “most emotional” — Skate Canada International on Saturday night, the highlight of a strong Grand Prix for Canada’s figure skating team less than four months from the Pyeongchang Olympics.

“I didn’t dare to think or say out loud that I wanted to win an Olympic gold medal,” Duhamel said Sunday morning, tired from the previous night’s adrenalin rush.

“I thought ‘Well, we’re not even in that position anymore. We’re not even in that fight or conversation anymore.’

“Over the last few weeks, I’ve been able to say out loud that yes, I do, I want to be an Olympic gold medallist.”

If that seemed a mighty lofty ambition after their seventh place finish at the world championships last spring, the Canadians catapulted themselves back into the Olympic-medal mix with Saturday’s free program that earned them 148.69 points — a mark they hadn’t seen in over a year.

“We couldn’t even get near 140 last year,” Duhamel said. “Most of the season we struggled in the mid-130s.”

“We’ve been on a downward spiral since the Boston world championship in 2016 (where they won their second straight world title),” Duhamel said. “We were stuck in this spinning mess that was spiralling out of control.”

The turning point, said Duhamel, came after their disappointing performance at last month’s Autumn Classic.

They went back to the drawing board and completely reworked their long program.

“We were stuck wondering ‘Are we ever going to have that great skate again?’ ” Duhamel said. “And a few weeks ago, we ran (the long program) clean and it was so emotional, I was teary-eyed. All we needed was that one time.

“It was so small, that little piece of hope that was left within us,” she added. “But it was there.”

Duhamel and Radford, who don’t compete again until Skate America, Nov. 24-26, said they’ll head back to training feeling like a huge weight has lifted.

“I feel like for the first time in so long that the sky’s the limit,” Duhamel said. “I feel like we can do so much more, and I don’t think we’ve felt that alive, rejuvenated energy in a really long time. And it’s exciting.”