Canadians cap golden return at worlds
Canadians cap golden return at worlds
Canadian ice dancers Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir capped their successful return with a third title at the world figure skating championships on Saturday as they look to recapture Olympic gold.
The 2010 Olympic champions held on despite Moir losing his footing during the free dance final, adding to their world titles in 2010 and 2012, by a 2.58 margin on twotime holders Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron of France.
After taking two years off following their Olympic silver medal in Sochi the Canadians are looking to recapture gold in Pyeongchang 2018.
And they have had one of their most successful season’s ever on a winning streak that also saw them capture the Grand Prix Final title for the first time. “This is a great start and we’re looking forward to building on it,” said 27-year-old Virtue.
“It has been a successful season for us but we’re not going to get carried away with that because we’ve never had a ‘perfect season’.” Training partners Papadakis and Cizeron had to settle for silver despite placing first in the free dance with a new world record score of 119.15.
Dancing to “Stillness” and “Happiness Does Not Wait” the French finished a mixed season on a high achieving a career best 196.04 overall.
“This has been one of the best moments that we’ve had together on the ice,” said Cizeron, who received stitches after cutting his hand on Friday. “It’s a programme that grew with us throughout the year and the more we were able to perform the more the audience was able to capture it.”
Both the French and the Canadians train together in Montreal, a situation which Virtue said had been a “motivating factor” in their successful return.
“For our entire careers we’ve skated with our competitors and trained alongside some of our biggest rivals so it’s certainly not uncommon and with people like Gabrielle and Guillaume they are in a class of their own,” Moir added.
“Both on and off the ice, they are inspiring, motivating and such wonderful and genuine people so it’s really a joy.”
Skating to “Pilgrims on a Long Journey” the Canadians were far from perfect scoring below their personal best with 116.19 in the free skate.
But after opening up a comfortable margin of 5.5 points in Friday’s short dance they held on and even bettered their own record overall score with 198.62.
“There were a couple of little bobbles so it was a little bit harder than usual but we popped back into it really quickly,” said Moir. American brother and sister Alex and Maia Shibutani-silver medallists in 2016 — took bronze at Helsinki’s Hartwall Arena with 185.18. Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue, had been third after the short dance, but dropped to tenth after Donohue slipped performing a twizzle.
“It was devastating,” said American Donohue. “It came out of nowhere and I was surprised the moment I felt myself going down.” —AFP