BARCELONA, Spain — A couple of Canadian duos picked a good time to come through with personal-best performances.
Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford broke their Canadian record to win the pairs competition Saturday at the Grand Prix of Figure Skating Final. Later in the day, Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje also had a personal best for the victory in ice dancing.
In the pairs, the world bronze medallists received 146.22 points for their free skate performed to a medley of tunes from the rock band Muse, giving them a total of 220.72. Ksenia Stolbova and Fedor Klimov of Russia were second with 213.72, followed by China’s Wenjing Sui and Cong Han with 194.31.
"Our goal coming here was to stand on the podium, so to win is a bonus," said Duhamel.
Duhamel, from Lively, Ont., and Radford, from Balmertown, Ont., are enjoying a standout season, with victories in both their Grand Prix events — Skate Canada International and NHK Trophy in Japan.
In ice dancing, Weaver and Poje, from Waterloo, Ont., bettered their score from last season’s silver medal performance at the worlds with 181.14 points. Madison Chock and Evan Bates of the U.S. were second at 167.09 and Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron of France third at 162.39.
"It’s definitely our strongest performance yet and it’s great to see the program is still growing," said Poje. "We really brought across the emotion and we were so connected on the ice that the story really came through."
The Canadians skated to excerpts from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.
"It’s hard to pick out a moment that really stands out for us from what we did on the ice because we were so focused," said Weaver. "My best memory was probably our lift because it got such a reaction from the crowd."
Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier of Toronto were fifth in the free dance and sixth overall.
Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan won the men’s gold. Spain’s Javier Fernandez took the silver and Russia’s Sergei Voronov won bronze.
Russian skaters finished 1-2 in the women’s competition. Elizaveta Tuktamysheva won gold and Elena Radionova earned silver while American Ashley Wagner won bronze.
It was the first time Canada reached the top of the podium at the Grand Prix Final since Patrick Chan won the men’s competition in 2011 and the first double victory in pairs and ice dance since 2001. At that event in Kitchener, Ont., Jamie Sale and David Pelletier took the pairs crown and Shae-Lynn Bourne and Victor Kraatz won the ice dance.
Duhamel and Radford topped their old mark of 213.62 set at the Canadian championships last January. It also ranks fourth all-time on the ISU scoring list.
The highlight of their free skate was landing the throw quadruple Salchow. It came just after Duhamel touched down on the side-by-side triple Lutz.
"We were so confident in our quad Salchow that it didn’t matter that I touched on the Lutz," said Duhamel. "It’s (the quad) has been so consistent for us in practice that we were going for it no matter what."
Radford was certainly pleased the green light was on.
"We’ve been waiting to have a skate like this all season," said Radford, who mentioned he was in the audience when Sale and Pelletier won their gold in 2001. "This was the first time that we actually hit the quad like we do in practice. It is so exciting."