Gilles and Poirier take gold in ice dance event at Four Continents Championships
Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier claimed the top spot on the podium in the ice dance event at the ISU Four Continents Championships held in Shanghai, China, on Sunday.
After securing the top spot in the rhythm dance with a score of 85.49, the reigning Canadian champions repeated their success in the free dance, earning 128.87 points, for a total of 214.36.
“This is a significant milestone in our career,” Poirier said after the event. “I think we can really be proud of how we skated. This week, we truly believed in ourselves. We skated like the champions we are.”
Fellow teammates Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Nikolaj Soerensen, maintained their second place with 207.54 points. The Americans Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko took bronze with 194.14 points.
The other Canadian duo, consisting of Marie-Jade Lauriault and Romain Le Gac, finished in fifth place with 190.83 points.
Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps finish in first place in the pairs event
On Saturday, Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps won their first gold in the pairs event, obtaining a total of 198.90 points to finish first, ahead of Japan’s Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara (190.77), and Americans Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea (187.28).
“It was fun on the ice. I’m disappointed with my mistake, but very happy with the rest of my performance. We made a lot of our improvements and we worked very hard,” admitted Deschamps, following some difficulties in the last competitions.
“We are very happy with the result, but we are not happy with our skating,” Stellato-Dudek said. “We know we can do much better than that.”
Teammates Lia Pereira and Trennt Michaud finished fifth in the event.
