Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon are turning disaster into triumph.
The Canadian champions from Boisbriand, Que., are leading after the original dance at the NHK Trophy figure skating event in Japan, even though they were unable to practice for three days because of missing luggage, including skates.
The NHK Trophy is the final of six Grand Prix qualifying events, and it is their last chance to make the Grand Prix Final in Tokyo in two weeks.
The surprise is that Dubreuil and Lauzon have outpointed former world silver medalists Albena Denkova and Maxim Staviyski of Bulgaria, known for their deep edges, lifts that are organic to the music and difficult footwork.
Coming only 70 days before the Turin Olympics, it's a major breakthrough for the Canadians, whose best finish at the world championships was seventh last year.
Using choreography from David Wilson of Toronto for the first time this season, Dubreuil and Lauzon widened their lead over the Bulgarians after the compulsory dance, which they won on Thursday. Their sexy salsa routine to the romantic Jacques Brel composition Ne Me Quitte Pas earned them 57.92 points, putting them 6.6 points ahead of the Bulgarians. It is not their personal best.
"We felt very good," Dubreuil said afterward. "It was actually very good to do a practice today. It was like a luxury."
Since winning the MasterCard Skate Canada event in St. John's, Dubreuil and Lauzon have worked more with Wilson to give the original dance more of a sexy Latin attitude.
And they've strived to upgrade the level of their elements. At Skate Canada, officials awarded them a level two on a combination spin.
This time, they got the highest level, four.
At Skate Canada, the Canadians narrowly defeated world bronze medalists Elena Grushina and Ruslan Gonchorov of Ukraine, who made a rash of mistakes. In Japan, they are having an easier time, but they had some help. Yesterday, Staviyski lost control of a twizzle in the midline footwork sequence and therefore lost unison.
And later, the officials gave the Bulgarians only a level two on a diagonal set of footwork, which appeared slow. They were baffled by the mark.
In the pairs event yesterday, Canadian silver medalists Utako Wakamatsu and Jean-Sébastien Fecteau of Thetford Mines, Que., won the bronze, their first Grand Prix medal.
The Canadians made many mistakes, but outskated a host of relatively unknown teams that have either never skated at a world championship or haven't finished better than 14th.
However, Wakamatsu and Fecteau pulled up from fourth place and were pleased that they were better than at Skate Canada, in which they finished sixth of eight entries, behind a Russian team that they defeated yesterday.
Wakamatsu fell on a throw triple loop, while Fecteau stumbled out of a triple toe loop attempt.
They finished behind Zhang Dan and Zhang Hao (not related) of China, who won the gold medal, although Hao had suffered from a cold two weeks before the event and Dan hurt her hip in a bad fall in practice last week.
Close on their heels in second place were the fast-rising German team of Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy, who won Skate Canada.
Neither the Germans nor the Canadians will compete at the Olympics. Wakamatsu, a native of Japan, decided not to take out Canadian citizenship because she would have had to give up her Japanese citizenship, while Ukrainian-born Savchenko will not get her German citizenship in time.
The free dance will be held today, as well as the men's short program.