DOUBLE THE PLEASURE
Canadians Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford repeat as world pairs champions.
BOSTON— There is actually no six-hop on-the-dot sproing element in the figure skating manual.
Or in Figure Skating for Dummies either, our preferred reference guide.
But Meagan Duhamel nailed that move too at the conclusion of her pairs free skate performance with partner Eric Radford Saturday afternoon.
The Canadians are once and again world champions.
It may be the only medal Canadians took away from the 2016 world championships, where significantly more was expected, but it was golden and it was adamant and it brought the house down at TD Garden. Up, rather, in a standing-O.
“It’s been frustration after frustration after frustration,” Duhamel said afterwards, reviewing a season where the team failed to defend its Grand Prix title, then pulled out of the Four Continents in February because of illness. Key components didn’t scan in their intensely busy free program —so the throw quad Lutz was ditched.
And the couple seemed to have lost just a bit of edge, that class-of-their distinction, and victorious predictability.
“It hurts you so deeply,” said the 30-year-old Duhamel, of things not going right despite all the exhausting hard work.
Her face splits open into a red glossed-lips grin. “I can’t keep anything in!’’ That was an explanation for her impatient exuberance, nearly all-in to the celebration before the routine was over.
At that point Duhamel was still being held high over Radford’s head, in a magnificent lift that felt almost like an airborne victory lap as Adele’s Hometown Glory reached its coda notes.
“I was waiting for him to put up that last lift because I was gonna explode!’’ Reminding herself: “Just wait, let him get through that lift — he needs his strength.”
Beneath her, Radford couldn’t afford to lose his stiff-armed focus.
Down like a feather into a gorgeous death spiral. And by then there was no doubt how it would end. Indeed, there was no doubt once Duhamel had in the final minute confidently landed on a throw triple Lutz — the last of the really difficult manoeuvres — and came out of it with both fists pumping triumphantly.
“After the throw Lutz I saw her do the fist pump,” smiled Radford, 31. “For Meagan, that’s sort of her last high-risk element. But there’s still some lifts left for me which require some concentration, especially at the end of the program.”
Aloft, Duhamel was screaming — incomprehensibly — mouth wide open.
“I don’t think I was even saying words. I was just YAAHHHH!”
But they were in sync, utterly sure about the outcome by then.
Duhamel: “After that (lift), I knew it was over. I knew we had done enough. The audience was going crazy. I could hear our coaches at the board screaming.”
Radford: “When we hit that very last position, there’s nothing else that can possibly happen by that point. I heard her scream and that brought a little smile to my face at the very, very end. When you can have those bursts of a moment in a program, that’s surreal.”
The Ontario team had come into the free-skate competition as defending titleholders but trailing the flashy and crowd-pleasing duo from China, Wenjing Sui and Cong Han, with the Russian husband/wife team of Tatiana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov hot on their heels, just a point behind.
But the free skate separated the strands of elite pairs. Sui and Han executed a perfect quad twist lift but then she fell on an attempted throw quad Salchow and doubled out of side by side jumps. Good enough for silver.
Meanwhile the Russians, who skated last, had a disastrous afternoon, dropping all the way to sixth overall. Aliona Savchenko — five times a world champion — and her new partner Bruno Massot took advantage of the shake-out by climbing into bronze for Germany.
Duhamel and Radford earned a season best 153.81, tops in the free, and an overall score of 231.99, seven points clear of the Chinese. The Canadians were the only team to cleanly land their throw quad, a Salchow, though Duhamel had to reach deep into her knees for the landing.
It was the first repeat gold for Canadian pairs at worlds since Barbara Wagner and Robert Paul did it from 1957 through 1960.
Even more uplifting for Skate Canada: Three Canadian teams finishing in the top eight.
Lubov Iliuschechkina and Dylan Moscovitch were seventh with a combined score of 199.52. Mosco- vitch’s former partner Kristen Moore-Towers and Michael Marinaro — injury substitutes summoned at the last minute — finished eighth with a score of 190.90 overall.
Duhamel is always a pistol, overthe-top expressive, yet she claimed an unusual sense of serenity before Saturday’s competition — actually, she described it as “nervous-calm,” assured in a program that elicits “soothing energy.”
In Friday’s short, “I was really pumped up before we skated. I was, ‘Yeah, we’re going to do this!’ ” Yesterday was different. “There’s so much to do in a long program that I don’t want to be all riled right at the beginning.”
Instead, they built up to a crescendo. That, too, has become a signature of their programs, which have pushed the envelope athletically. Once they embraced the quad, other teams felt they needed one too. But no other team executed the trick anywhere near cleanly yesterday.
The Canadians have clearly set the base level technically for next season and leading towards the 2018 Olympics.
“It really gives certain teams an opportunity to set themselves apart,,’’ observed Radford, “and that’s an opportunity Meagan and I took last season with the throw quad and the side by side Lutz. If that wasn’t there, we might not be where we are right now.”
Which is on top of the world, giddy and giddier.
“Eric’s always the calm to my storm,” said Duhamel, affectionately.
“But he is just as excited as I am.”