Canada's Duhamel and Radford win silver medal at ISU Grand Prix

PARIS (Nov. 17, 2012) Meagan Duhamel of Lively, Ont., and Eric Radford of Balmertown, Ont., won the silver medal on Saturday in pairs at the fifth stop on the ISU Grand Prix figure skating circuit.

It was the second silver medal this season for the third-year pair. They posted the best score in Saturdays free skate with 124.43 points to finish at 186.71 and just fell short in catching gold medallists Yuko Kavaguti and Alexander Smirnov of Russia who totalled 187.99. Stefania Berton and Ondrej Hotarek of Italy were third at 169.49.

Its a bittersweet result for us, said Duhamel. When you come so close to winning its a real heartbreaker. We lost a couple of levels in the long program and didnt finish as strong as we would have liked.

One of the mistakes at the end of the program for the Canadian champions was Duhamel falling on the throw. They also lost points for both their lifts.

The first lift we are not sure the reason for the deduction and we will have to review it, said Radford. The second one we had some balance issues. We usually have a lot of success with the throw so we are not sure why it didnt work out. Its at the end of the program so maybe we were feeling some fatigue.

Silver medallists at Skate Canada last month, Duhamel and Radford will likely qualify for the Grand Prix Final next month in Sochi, Russia, the host city for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games.

It was extremely important for us to get that opportunity to go to Sochi, said Radford. Just to get a feeling for the venue and the city will potentially be very beneficial.

In ice dancing, Nathalie Pechalat and Fabian Bourzat of France took the gold with Anna Cappellini and Luca Lanotte of Italy second and Ekaterina Riazanova and Ilia Tkachenko of Russia third.

Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier of Toronto took sixth spot with a season best free skate to finish at 135.86.

We are improving each competition, said Gilles. The levels that we worked on in training after Skate Canada we nailed them here. I think we are still working the kinks out and our objective is having our programs down pat for the nationals.

Canada had no entries in the mens and womens competition.

Full results: http://www.isuresults.com/results/gpfra2012

More information: www.skatecanada.ca

Source: http://boxscorenews.com/canadas-duhamel-and-radford-win-silver-medal-at-isu-grand-prix-p50976-268.htm

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