Pang, Tong knee their way to victory in pairs short
Experienced Chinese pair show off chemistry, skill to top field; Kavaguti, Smirnov place second
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| China's Qing Pang and Jian Tong showed no signs of age in their winning short program. (Getty Images) |
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Pang and Tong produced side-by-side triple toes, a triple twist, throw triple loop and three Level 4 elements in their "Paso Doble" program. The two-time world champions received 68.57 points.
"This is our second competition of the season, and we did much better than at Skate America, so we are very satisfied," Tong said.
Skating to "The Blue Danube," Kavaguti and Smirnov landed a side-by-side triple toe, a triple twist and throw triple loop to score 63.70 points.
"We are satisfied with our performance in our first competition," Kavaguti said. "We skated with emotions, and I think the audience danced with us. We really like this music, and it is working much better for us than the music we first had."
Moore-Towers and Moscovitch turned in a clean performance as well with a triple twist, triple toe and throw triple loop to "Motley Crew." The Canadian couple was awarded 59.12 points.
"We are pretty pleased. It's our first Grand Prix, and we more or less went clean," Moore-Towers said. "We lost a couple of levels, which would have put us a little bit higher on the number, but what's done is done."
The new team of Cheng Peng and Hao Zhang, representing China, came fourth with 57.89 points, and Ksenia Stolbova and Fedor Klimov of Russia placed fifth with 56.66 points.