Canadian ice dancers Gillies, Poirier finish fourth at Rostelecom Cup

MOSCOW — Canadian ice dancing pair Piper Gillies and Paul Poirier opened the Grand Prix figure skating season with a fourth-place finish Saturday at the Rostelecom Cup.

”We did what we needed to do here,” said Gilles. ”It’s a good start for us.”

American brother-sister duo Maia and Alex Shibutani won the ice dance, placing first in the short and free dances and racking up a combined 189.24 points. Two Russian couples took silver and bronze, respectively: Ekaterina Bobrova and Dmitri Soloviev (184.74), and Alexandra Stepanova and Ivan Bukin (179.35).

Gilles and Poirier followed at 172.29.

”This is the start of a marathon,” said Poirier. ”We want to make sure we are peaking at the right time.”

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In the men’s event, Nathan Chen’s technique trumped Yuzuru Hanyu’s superiority in program components to win gold.

Chen, the U.S. champion, reeled off four quads including a spectacular opening quad Lutz-triple toe opening combination and a quad-double-double cascade in the second half of the free skate.

Hanyu did three quads but won the free skate segment with a six-point advantage on components. However, Chen was too far ahead after Friday’s short program.

“The beginning half of my program, I was really happy with,” Chen said. “The quads I did relatively well … then in the second half I got a bit tired.”

Hanyu, the Olympic champion, said he needs to get more rotation on his jumps.

“I realize again how important it is to practice more, and in skating each element is so important and I just need to perform each element cleanly,” the Japanese skater said.

Mikhail Kolyada of Russia won bronze, followed by compatriot Dmitri Aliev, who fell three times. Canada’s Nam Nguyen was seventh with 238.45 points.

Russians took all of the spots on the pairs podium, led by Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov whose high-spirited free skate opened with a soaring triple twist and included two long-distance throw triples. Their overall finish was some 20 points ahead of Olympic silver medallists Ksenia Stolbova and Fedor Klimov, who were plagued by two Stolbova falls.

Kristina Astakhova and Alexei Rogonov won bronze. Canadians Julianne Seguin and Charlie Bilodeau were fifth.

“We left a lot of points of the table,” said Seguin. ”Still it’s a good start. We had a solid short program and our long just needs some tweaking and more performance mileage.”

The pair made mistakes on both side-by-side jumps.

“There was some nervousness,” said Bilodeau. “We had some issues in training this week and that can affect your confidence.”

— With files from The Associated Press

The Canadian Press