Hip injury trips up Radford and Duhamel
HELSINKI— Faces blank.
For a second, as the marks — the very poor marks — registered on their brainpans, and then a twitch of dismay before they put their best smiles forward.
Wondering: Were we really that awful? Yes, they were. Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford, the two-time defending world champions, will not repeat in 2017. The Canadian team will be hardpressed to dig themselves out of the seventh-place hole into which they stumbled and staggered in Wednesday’s short program competition.
Not since their first season together, half a dozen years ago, has the duo been this far back.
“We were both surprised with how low the score was,” Radford admitted afterwards of the 72.67 mark, nearly 10 points shy of the Chinese leaders, Wenjiing Sui and Cong Han.
Yet they both claimed to be proud of the effort, under trying conditions.
There was a compelling reason for the sub-par presentation: Radford’s dead hip, which has been in spasm all week despite continuous therapy. “I’m surprised that my hip is still intact. It’s been massaged to death.”
The pair adjusted for the physical impairment — tossing out side-by- side triple Lutz jumps, replacing them with easier triple toes, a decision of desperation undertaken only following their morning skate — but it failed to alleviate the basic infirmity.
Radford managed to pull out those toe rotations but just about every other element in the Killer routine suffered. He couldn’t toss Duhamel strongly enough on the throw triple Lutz, causing her to put a hand down to stay upright; he couldn’t place her down cleanly from a lasso lift.
They finished one spot beneath Canadian compatriots Liubov Ilyushechkina and Dylan Moscovitch, though five slots ahead of Canada’s third team, Julianne Seguin and Charlie Bilodeau.
Nor were they the only elite tandem to come to grief. Sochi Olympic silver medallists Ksenia Stolbova and Fedor Klimov of Russia suffered two falls and are 13th heading into Thursday’s free skate.
Apart from Sui and Han, it was not a night of pretty skating at the Hartwall Arena.
“I can’t even tell you,” Radford lamented when asked how hard it was to get through that performance.
And still. “I feel so proud. I think that the way we skated was excellent for the condition.”
The Canadians have no intention of withdrawing from the final.