Defense of a Canadian title is nothing new for four-time national champions Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford, who in past seasons had to battle through a tight rivalry with Kirsten Moore-Towers and Dylan Moscovitch. This time around, the Canadian Tire National Skating Championships present a chance for the pair to regroup after the stresses of the Grand Prix circuit, which concluded with a silver at the the Grand Prix Final — a competition that inspired some major structural changes to their Moulin Rouge short.
“We put the throw lutz earlier and we added some steps into it, and we’re telegraphing it a good five or six feet less — it’s a little bit more in the center of the ice than waiting cautiously until the end of the ice,” said Duhamel. “We’re ending now with lift/death spiral instead of just ending with the lift. We changed the footwork a little bit to make it more musical and to add quality to it.”
The changes, the team agreed, have led to a more natural-feeling skate.
“Before the Grand Prix Final, I don’t think there were any issues with the program itself, but I think we could sort of isolate maybe as a minor issue the throw lutz — it just wasn’t feeling comfortable,” said Radford. “Each time we were training that element in the program, we had to be very aware of what we were doing technically in order to make sure that it was successful. And then when you’re in a high-pressure situation, you run a risk of missing something when the element is in that sort of state.”
“We feel like the program as a whole is breathing and flowing a lot better, which in turn helps us train it more consistently and improves our confidence,” said Duhamel.
Shelved for now is their long program’s potential second quad throw, a lutz, with the team focusing instead on simply delivering two clean performances. They hope, however, to restore the element by the World Championships. “It’s starting to feel a little bit more natural like it did in the summer,” said Duhamel. “It kind of went through a funny phase during the Grand Prix circuit, where it was feeling stuck.”
But minor changes, particularly the throw entrances — “less telegraphed and more fluid,” said Radford — will also be apparent in their Nationals long, intended like those of the short to improve overall ease.
Adding another wrinkle to preparations is a left middle finger sprain for Radford — an injury he described as “annoying” — incurred earlier this week in a gym mishap. “I’m actually not really aware how much I used [the left finger] until today,” he said. “The only thing that really hurt it was the throw salchow, because it releases off our left hand and there’s a lot of force there. So it hasn’t prevented us from doing anything, really, but that one throw, but there’s nothing I can do about it — I just have to let it heal as much as possible and hope for the best.”
After finding themselves all too aware of the mental pressures of entering a season as world champions, Duhamel and Radford are feeling more at ease heading into Halifax.
“We’re trying to see how far we can improve, and of course sometimes when you do that, you’re bound to run into mistakes along the way,” said Duhamel. “But I can say for myself, I feel extremely settled right now going into the Nationals, and that was something that I didn’t feel on the Grand Prix circuit. So I’m hoping that that’s going to lead to calm and confident performances in Halifax and for the rest of the season.”