Canadian ice dancers Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir finished second at the Grand Prix of Figure Skating Final in Nagoya, Japan, on Saturday.
Despite a season’s best free dance, the duo were unable to unseat the leaders after the short dance, Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron of France.
The French skaters held a slim 0.54 point lead, but also posted a season’s best free dance to finish first with a total score of 202.16.
Virtue and Moir were next with 199.86, while American siblings Maia and Alex Shibutani were third with 188.00.
“We made a couple of uncharacteristic glitches that we don’t even make in training that often,” Moir said. “We don’t like not winning competitions but in the grand scheme of things it was still a performance we were proud of.”
The three-time world champions are pleased with their progress leading to the Olympics.
“We’re on track,” Virtue said. “We’ve had an extremely successful season and we just have to continue taking care of the little details and making the tweaks so our programs are at their best come February.”
Duhamel, Radford take bronze
In pairs action, Canadians Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford were in fifth place after the short program but rallied to a bronze-medal finish on Saturday.
Germany’s Aljona Savchenko and Bruno Massot won the pairs event with a total score of 236.68, followed by China’s Wenjing Sui and Cong Han (230.89) and the Canadians (210.83).
“We took a nice step here and continued to build,” Radford said. “We want to take another step up at the national championships [in January] get some more levels and hit that big peak at the Olympic Games.”
Osmond can’t hold lead
Kaetlyn Osmond was leading the ladies competition after the short program, but the Canadian slipped to a third-place finish on Saturday.
Osmond came into the day’s action with a slim 0.54 point lead and was overtaken by Russians Alina Zagitova (223.30) and Maria Sotskova (216.28). The Marystown, N.L., native finished with a score of 215.16.
”The mistakes that I made were silly ones and they won’t happen again,” Osmond said. “I made a lot of changes to my program since my last competition and I did those well.”
