Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford perform at the National Skating Championships in Ottawa on Jan. 22, 2017.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
When it comes to pure athleticism, Canada's two-time world pairs champions Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford are virtually in a class by themselves. But the two have been forced to scale back their technical difficulty because of a judging system that seems unable to keep pace.
The two-time reigning world champions vow to keep pushing the envelope, but are sad to say change may not happen before they close the book on their illustrious careers.
"You always want to move the sport forward," Duhamel said. "It's frustrating and I don't see things are going to change in our career, but we're going to keep trying and keep fighting so that they can be changed for future generations, so that pairs do feel like it's worth it to push themselves out of the box and to try different things and to be creative."
Duhamel and Radford, who are expected to retire after next year's Pyeongchang Olympics, captured a Canadian-record sixth national senior title this week, but it came without the throw triple Axel that took literally hundreds of hours, they said, to perfect this past off-season. Because the base value of the throw doesn't reflect its difficulty, they've decided it's not worth the risk.
The throw triple Axel is just as sounds: Radford throws Duhamel into a triple Axel, which is three-and-a-half rotations in the air.
They executed the tough element at Skate Canada. But at the Grand Prix Final, Duhamel fell on it, earning them just a single point for the element. They went on to finish a disappointing third. The Canadians also do a throw quad Salchow, which no other team in the world has landed this season.
"It's frustrating, the fact that we know how hard these things are and not being rewarded for how difficult they are," said Duhamel, a 31-year-old from Lively, Ont.
Radford, 31, from Balmertown, Ont., believes that the dragging of heels on this issue goes against the spirit of sport.
"What is the essence of sport? If you can run faster that someone else in the 100-metre dash, you win because you ran faster than them," Radford said. "And that is the essence of figure skating that keeps it in the sport category rather than an art."