Two-time defending world pairs champ battling injury

HELsINKI

On the eve of the world figure skating championships, Canada’s two-time pairs champion Eric Radford woke up and could “hardly move.”

The 32-year-old from Balmertown, Ont., is battling an injury to his right hip that struck last week and plagued him during Tuesday’s two practice sessions, the worst possible timing for Radford and pairs partner Meagan Duhamel.

“It’s extremely frustrating,” Radford said.

Radford originally felt the injury to the hip of his landing leg last week, describing it as a spasmed muscle deep in his abdominals.

“It was bugging me but still I had good control. It was just sort of sore,” he said. “And then this morning I woke up and it was so stiff that I could hardly move, and then when I got on the ice, I can’t squeeze my legs together. I don’t know what muscle it is specifically. . . when I’m in the air, I can’t pull in properly, my legs feel like they’re going to fly apart. And even when I do cross-cuts, I feel like I don’t have a lot of control over my hips.”

It mostly affects their side-byside triple Lutz jumps because he pivots powerfully off his right hip. He fell on three of them during Tuesday afternoon’s practice and touched a hand down on a fourth.

“What it feels like is the muscle’s not responding, it feels like when you have jelly legs,” he said.

Radford has had a hip impingement, a syndrome that affects range of motion, since 2012, but has managed it through treatment.

He received treatment after practice and said it felt slightly better, and will undergo treatment Wednesday morning before he and Duhamel skate the short program later in the day.

“I’m just hoping I wake up and it’s back to normal because right now it still feels weak,” Radford said, adding he’s not considering withdrawing.

The injury comes at the tail end of a roller-coaster campaign for Duhamel and Radford, who were so dominant through the previous two seasons, winning all but one competition.

They finished third at this season’s Grand Prix Final and second at Four Continents last month, and then headed back to the drawing board the past few weeks to reassess “what’s gone on this season, why are we underperforming, why are we not succeeding in competitions the way that we’re training,” Duhamel said.