It was a golden hat trick for team Canada last night as five competitors stood in the number one spot on the podium at the Skate Canada International competition at the Enmax Centre.
Good times are here again for former world champion Patrick Chan as he carved his way to victory across the ice with an almost flawless free skate performance. Chan, who was in second place after falling victim to the triple Axel during his short program, thrilled spectators as he landed an enormous quad toe loop and a triple Axel to score a 271.14 final score.
Admitting that he didn’t have the smoothest arrival to his final performance of the Grand Prix, Chan said he needed to deal with his own demons.
“In the two warm-ups it was a little shaky, I got off and had a lot of time with my thoughts and I think that just got the best of me and I just had too many emotions going on and I just let it all out and that really helped.”
The pressure was on for Chan as his competition pulled out all the stops. Olympic gold medalist, Yuzuru Hanyu, who was the first man to attempt three quad elements in a Grand Prix event, wound up with the silver while fellow Japanese skater Daisuke Murakami received bronze after leading in the short program.
Not as lucky was fellow comeback kid, Kaetlyn Osmond who struggled throughout the event with injury. Osmond fell to 11th place after several tumbles during her free skate program. Continuing her solid performance was American Ashley Wagner who claimed the gold in the women’s field, followed by current world champion, Russian skater Elizaveta Tuktamysheva. Tuktamysheva fought her way back to the podium after a seventh place finish in the short program. Japanese skater Yuka Nagai finished with a bronze.
The ice dancing was also hotly contested with American siblings, Maia and Alex Shibutani holding the crowd in the palm of their hand to Coldplay’s Fix You. The moving performance earned them a standing ovation from spectators and had Canadian champions, Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje, with plenty to do during their free skate performance.
Weaver and Poje delivered and secured the gold medal in their stunning performance which scored them 173.79 ahead of the second placed Shibutani’s (168.36) and the Russian pair Ekaterina Bobrova and Dimitri Soloviev who scored 161.11, earning them the bronze.
Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford again proved how consistent they are with a gold medal in the pairs free skate portion of the evening. Duhamel and Radford built on their commanding lead, increasing their score to 216.16 over silver medalists, Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov from Russia (191.19). Fellow Canadian’s Kirsten Moore-Towers and Michael Marinaro took home the bronze medal scoring 174.85.
The grand prix event comes to a close today at the Enmax Centre with all medalists showing off their lighter side in the gala exhibition performance. In a show choreographed by former Canadian national team skater Jeremy Ten, the final performance of the event looked enjoyable and stress free for all competitors involved during the rehearsals on Sunday morning. For final scoring and placements, head over to the Skate Canada website.
