Lively's Meghan Duhamel and skating partner Eric Radford moved from second place after the short program to win with a score of 222.22 in the pairs competition at the Skate Canada International event Saturday.
Aliona Savchenko and Bruno Massot of Germany were second at 215.66 and Vanessa James and Morgan Cipres of France remained third at 214.37.
“This is a truly emotional skate for Eric and I,’’ said Duhamel. “Last season I don’t think we even came close to 140 points (for the long program) because we were struggling so much. This season we want to build and deliver.’’
It was the fourth straight win for the pair at the Skate Canada event, and comes after a year long struggle for the pair – and just a few months before the Pyeongchang Olympics.
"It's really incredible for us to have that great skate here in Canada, because we're not going to have the opportunity to perform here at home many more times -- we have just our nationals left," Duhamel said. "To be able to have that moment one more time in Canada is a special memory for us."
While they have dominated the event in recent years, she said they knew they would be in tough to take top spot again.
"We didn't take this competition lightly at all,” she said. “We knew the pairs field here was crazy, crazy deep. The scores for the top 3 teams is incredibly high.
"I think that fuelled us as we came into this competition, and fuelled us (Saturday) as the teams before us -- the French delivered such strong performances -- it kind of brought out our competitive spirit that we felt was missing throughout last season.
