Duhamel, Radford cap golden season
Canadians hold off two Chinese teams to win at world championships
Canadians Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford have their perfect season.
The pair held off two Chinese teams in the free skate to capture gold in the pairs event Thursday at the world figure skating championships.
“Some dreams are so big that you can’t even imagine them happening and it’s all happening right now,” said Radford. “I could never have imagined it and I can’t tell if it’s a dream or reality. We’ve worked so hard to get here and it’s amazing.”
It is Canada’s first pairs title since Jamie Salé and David Pelletier won in 2001 in Vancouver.
Canada had a chance for a second gold medal earlier today in ice dance. Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje trailed Americans Madison Chock and Evan Bates by less than two points heading into the free dance — the same spot they found themselves in at last month’s Four Continents Championship before they roared back to win.
Duhamel and Radford, who won bronze at the previous two world championships, were the leaders after the pairs short program.
Skating to a medley of songs by Muse in the free skate, the Canadians produced a triple twist, side by side triple Lutz and triple toe-double toe- double toe jumps and a throw triple Lutz.
The program wasn’t perfect — Duhamel touched down with her hands on a throw quadruple Salchow, while Radford wobbled on a side- by- side spin — but it was good for 144.55 points, three more than silver medallists Wenjing Sui and Cong Han of China.
Duhamel and Radford finished with 221.53 points, while Sui and Han had 214.12. Qing Pang and Jian Tong, competing in their 16th world championships, took home the bronze.
“Eric and I are very proud about not only our performance, but our entire season that led to this experience and this performance here,” Duhamel said afterwards.
“We didn’t have a perfect skate. We knew we didn’t need a perfect skate, but we fought until the very end and that was what we knew we needed to do. So when the music finished we were proud of ourselves and that was our goal. So it was achieved even before we were awarded the gold medal, which was a huge bonus.”
After a seventh- place finish at the Sochi Games last year, Duhamel, from Lively, Ont., and Radford, from Balmertown, Ont., decided to continue their careers and skate another year — and haven’t lost since.
They won all six international events they entered this season, including the Grand Prix Final and Four Continents.
“This is a very personal victory. Every single victory along the way this season had a very special meaning,” Duhamel said.
Bronze medallists Pang and Tong, who came out of retirement this year to finish their careers in Shanghai, now have six world medals ( two gold, one silver, three bronze) to go with their silver medal from the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.
“I fulfilled ( my partner’s) wishes to come back to the rink,” Tong said, before adding with a smile, “I certainly hope Pang Qing will not drag me back to the rink once again.”