BOSTON — After two seasons of dominating international ice dancing, Canadians Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje will go home from the world figure skating championships without the gold medal they had their heart set on.
It’s heartbreak and bruised egos instead.
The Waterloo, Ont., duo finished fifth at the world championships Thursday, dropping a spot after finishing fourth in the short dance.
They planned to spend Thursday night with family and friends.
"We have so much family here, hopefully they’ll help our bruised egos a little bit," Weaver said. "But there’ll definitely be some celebration. We’ve had a spectacular season, we’ve done so many great things to be proud of, so there will be some champagne flowing tonight."
Skating to Max Richter’s haunting "On the Nature of Daylight," Weaver and Poje scored 110.18 for a total of 182.01 points. They were noticeably out of sync, however, on their twizzles — side-by-side spins that travel across the ice.
"I don’t know what it was, just a brain fart or what," Poje said. "We’re only human, we make mistakes."
Piper Gilles of Toronto and Paul Poirier of Unionville, Ont., fifth after the short dance, fell three spots to eighth.
France’s Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron won gold with 194.46 and easily held off American siblings Maia and Alex Shibutani, who scored 188.43. Americans Madison Chock and Evan Bates won bronze with 185.77.
Weaver and Poje had been gunning for gold after winning world silver in 2014 and bronze last year. They arrived in Boston having won all but two competitions over the past two seasons, including the prestigious Grand Prix Final in December.
"It’s a little discouraging to have two seasons in a row now, such success at the beginning, and then not as much as we would like in the end," Weaver said. "Sometimes it doesn’t happen, but we’ve got a long way to go, so much more potential in store, and we’re never short of motivation."
The Canadians are known for their difficult programs, with intricate spins and lifts.
"It’s hard, it’s really very difficult and it took us a long time to master," Weaver said of their romantic free dance, choreographed by Peter Tchernyshev with Shae-Lynn Bourne. "I don’t want to say it’s too hard, I don’t think it is, I think we just… the past two outings we haven’t shown what we’re capable of.
"But these are the programs that push us to a new level, and because of this we’ll be even better next year. And our goal is long term, our goal is 2018, and we have still many steps to go, because we’re not feeling too sad about this right now."
The international ice dance field will have one more team to contend with in the run up to the to the Olympics in Pyeongchang. Canada’s Olympic champions Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir announced they’re making a comeback.
Earlier Thursday, Gabrielle Dalemen of Newmarket, Ont., finished a best-ever eighth in the women’s singles short program.
The 18-year-old reeled off three triple jumps en route to scoring 67.38 points.
American Gracie Gold is the leader going into Saturday’s long program with 76.43 points. Anna Pogorilaya is second with 73.98, while her Russian teammate Evgenia Medvedeva was third with 73.76.
Gabrielle Daleman’s preparations for the world figure skating championships were far from perfect.
A nagging foot injury had her spending more time in physiotherapy than on the ice, and she was forced to withdraw from last month’s Four Continents championships.
Daleman bounced back on Thursday, pumping her fists a couple of times with jubilation afterward.
"I’ve always had trouble with the short, so just to finally lay a clean short program, not only this year, but doing it that well and that confident was such a relief, I was so overwhelmed," she said of her celebration. "It wasn’t just that I skated clean and I did my job, it was that I finally did it in front of basically a home crowd and all my hard work finally paid off."
Alaine Chartrand of Prescott, Ont., fell on her double Axel and finished 17th.
Daleman has been dealing with plantar fasciitis since the Sochi Olympics, a chronic injury to the tissue that runs along the bottom of the foot. She also has arthritis and tendinitis in that same troublesome right foot, and it flared up shortly after the Canadian championships in January, her foot swelling to a balloon.
The next few weeks were more treatment than training.
"I was probably in physio six, seven days a week for about three hours doing exercises, heating, icing, everything I could," said Daleman. "I hate needles but I was doing acupuncture to get the swelling out."
Canada hasn’t won a world medal in women’s singles since Joannie Rochette’s silver in 2009.
