Canada’s top skaters combine for team gold

Canada showed that sending out your best is a winning strategy, easily taking the gold medal in the team figure skating event Monday.

Patrick Chan placed first in the men’s free skate, and ice dancing superstars Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue won the free dance to give Canada the comfortable victory.

The team of Russians won the silver medal thanks in part to a first place by Alina Zagitova in the women’s free skate. The United States was third, led by Mirai Nagasu, who gave a near-perfect performance eight years after her last Olympic appearance.

The U.S. clinched third even before its ice dancers took the ice. The Americans led Italy by four points, and when the Italian ice dancers, Anna Cappellini and Luca Lanotte, did not score well enough to win the free dance, the U.S. had replicated its third-place finish in the event at Sochi.

That pretty much left Maia and Alex Shibutani’s program as an exhibition.

[JULIE JACOBSON/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS] Mirai Nagasu became the first American woman to land a triple axel in the Olympics, hitting it in the women’s free skate and helping the U.S. team to a bronze medal in team competition at the Gangneung Ice Arena.