Perfect season continues for Duhamel and Radford
SEOUL – Canada’s Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford remained undefeated this season as they won the gold medal in pairs on Saturday at the ISU Four Continents figure skating competition.
Duhamel and Radford produced the best scores in both the short program and free skate to finish with 219.48 points. Three Chinese pairs followed including Cheng Peng and Hao Zhang in second at 201.45 and Qing Pang and Jian Tong in third at 199.99.
‘’I’m really proud we how we handled the pressure,’’ said Radford, from Balmertown, Ont.. ’’We kept it together and still executed a strong performance and what I`m most excited about it that we had such a strong score here and we know we can do that much better. Heading into the world championships we’ll be looking to improve upon that.’’
The Canadians have won their four international assignments so far this season, including the ISU Grand Prix Final, as well as the national title last month.
‘’We’re very proud of our effort here,’’ said Duhamel, from Lively, Ont. ‘’The highlight was landing the throw quad after we had a small mistake on the side-by-side triple Lutz. That’s very difficult to do but we kept our focus and composure and that was very important for the rest of the program.’’
Next assignment for Duhamel and Radford: the world championships in March.
‘’Going into the worlds we’ll be looking to add more sharpness to the technical elements as well as more speed and energy throughout the program,’’ said Duhamel.
Lubov Iliushechkina and Dylan Moscovitch of Toronto were sixth and Kirsten Moore-Towers of St. Catharines, Ont., and Michael Marinaro of Sarnia, Ont., ninth.
In men’s competition, Denis Ten of Kazakhstan took the gold with Joshua Farris of the U.S. second and Han Yan of China third.
Nam Nguyen of Toronto was 11th, Jeremy Ten of Vancouver 12th and Liam Firus of North Vancouver 14th.
Competition ends Sunday with the women’s free skate.
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