Figure Skating

The Canadian figure skating team got its Olympic season off to a roaring start by winning a gold and a silver medal at the Trophée Eric Bompard - the first Grand Prix event of the season - in Paris on Saturday.

Tessa Virtue of London, Ont., and Scott Moir of nearby Ilderton won gold in ice dancing event and dominated the competition, winning by a very easy 16.07 points, even though they received deductions for lifts that slightly exceeded the maximum time limit.

Their win came during their first appearance in a Grand Prix event since 2007. They missed the Grand Prix season last year because Virtue suffered a leg injury that seriously curtailed their training.

Meanwhile, Jessica Dubé of Varennes, Que., and Bryce Davison of Huntsville, Ont., pulled themselves back into international prominence again by placing second in the pairs event, behind Maria Mukhortova and Maxim Trankov of Russia but ahead of world champions Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy of Germany.

"Jess and Bryce came here on a mission," said Michael Slipchuk, high-performance director for Skate Canada. "They were very consistent all week. Their long program was very well received. It's a program made for them."

After winning a bronze medal at the 2008 world championships in Sweden, Dubé and Davison dropped to seventh last year, struggling with experimental programs that didn't quite bring out the best in them. But this year, they've gone back to the romantic programs that show off their charisma. On Saturday, they skated to music from the Robert Redford-Barbara Streisand movie The Way We Were.

Davison admitted he felt lost in the program, but not in a bad way. Rather he felt carried away by the emotion of the piece, he said, and hardly thought about the technical elements. "That is exactly what we wanted," he said.

Dubé said one of their goals was to increase their presentation mark and, in Paris, they succeeded. Their other goal was to finish in the top two.

Dubé and Davison will meet Savchenko and Szolkowy again at Skate Canada, but the Germans may have ironed out their troubles by then.

Savchenko and Szolkowy, who are two-time world champions, bombed in the free program on Saturday, falling to third from first entering the final program. Savchenko underrotated on a triple toe loop, and slipped out of a spiral sequence. Szolkowy fell on a triple Salchow, and they did not even get a death spiral started, as Savchenko fell out of it on entry. It got no points at all.

The nightmare continued when they turned a triple twist into a double, and then a throw triple Salchow at the end of their routine turned into a single. They shook their heads after they finished. Szolkowy said later he didn't know what happened.

Dubé and Davison landed one of their cleanest triple twists and landed triple Salchows - moves that plagued them last year. Dubé had a slight foot touchdown on a difficult throw triple Lutz and put her hands down on a throw triple loop.

"There were some small errors on throws, but we are not far off," Davison said. "It's a great start and we just want to keep the ball rolling."

"They've really pulled themselves back and into the game here," said William Thompson, chief executive officer of Skate Canada.

For Virtue and Moir, the important thing was not the marks, but the work to prepare themselves for the Olympic season.

"It was exciting for us to get back in the competition when we were trained and ready to skate," Moir said. "Last year [with lack of training], we crossed our fingers a little bit and hoped for the best. But this year is a whole different story and it feels so nice to get back on the international ice and have programs that we're really proud of and ready to compete."

Moir said their free dance on Saturday, to Adagietto from Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 5 is their favourite program that they've done, the perfect vehicle for an Olympics in their home country.

On their point deductions for lengthy lifts, Moir said: "I guess I was enjoying the moment a little too much and left them a little too long.

"It's tricky with the new [judging] system. You really have to have your internal clock working pretty accurately. ... We'll clean that up and it won't be a problem in the future."

Their complex lifts, for which they earned extremely high execution marks, also caused another problem. Virtue lost an earring. Moir thinks she did it on the final rotational lift.

"It happens pretty often in practice," Moir said. "We're doing tricky lifts and she's flinging herself all over the place. It's kind of par for the course. ... She's pretty good at finding them, too."

Kim Yu-Na, a South Korean star who trains in Toronto with Brian Orser, won the women's event by a landslide: by 36.04 points over former world champion Mao Asada of Japan. And the South Korean won it even though she left out a triple flip near the start of her program.

"When I was setting up for the flip, I thought that there was something on the ice, and I was shaky," she said.

Her victory on Saturday marked her first competition since she became the first South Korean to win a world figure skating championship, last March.

And even though it is the beginning of the season, Kim broke her previous record scores for both the long program (133.95) and the total score (210.03). Her previous record total score, achieved at the world championships last March, was 207.71 while her previous best long program score was 133.70 set at the Cup of Russia in 2007.

Asada failed to complete the rotations on four jumps, but did land a triple Axel - double toe loop combination.

And the South Korean won it even though she left out a triple flip near the start of her program.

"When I was setting up for the flip, I thought that there was something on the ice, and I was shaky," she said.

Her victory on Saturday marked her first competition since she became the first South Korean to win a world figure skating championship, last March.

And even though it is the beginning of the season, Kim broke her previous record scores for both the long program (133.95) and the total score (210.03). Her previous record total score, achieved at the world championships last March, was 207.71 while her previous best long program score was 133.70 set at the Cup of Russia in 2007.

Asada failed to complete the rotations on four jumps, but did land a triple Axel - double toe loop combination.

Nobunari Oda of Japan won the men's event with 242.53 points - without a quad - while Czech skater Tomáš Verner placed second, 12 points back. Young American skater Adam Rippon, also trained by Orser, won the bronze medal.

Former world champion Brian Joubert placed fourth overall, admitting that he was disappointed, but not ready to compete yet. His nerves started to take over when he made mistakes. Joubert, a Frenchman skating on home ice, missed all three quad attempts in his long program Saturday.

Mukhortova and Trankov, the No..2-ranked pairs team in Russia, won their first Grand Prix gold medal on Saturday with the best performance of their career, while skating to Love Story, the music Canadians Jamie Salé and David Pelletier used to win the 2002 Olympic gold medal. The Russians finished about 12 points ahead of Dubé and Davison.