By Canadian Press

James and Radford withdraw from pairs competition at skating trials

Jan 8, 2022 | 11:44 AM

OTTAWA — Vanessa James and Eric Radford withdrew from the pairs competition at the Canadian figure skating championships before Saturday’s free program.

James and Radford were fourth in Friday’s short program. Both skaters contracted COVID-19 over the Christmas holidays and only returned to the ice to train earlier this week after spending 10 days in quarantine.

Radford is a two-time world champion with former partner Meagan Duhamel and came out of retirement at age 36 to compete with James, a Toronto native who’d previously skated for France.

The two said earlier in the week that they hoped if they were still feeling too under-the-weather to compete, that they could appeal to be on the Canadian team based on season results.

Radford had compared the global pandemic to “an invisible minefield” for athletes during what’s already a stressful time.

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He added that he and James were perhaps among the lucky ones, as they now don’t have the added worry of testing positive. A positive test from this point on could keep an athlete from travelling to Beijing.

Canadian men’s singles skater Stephen Gogolev withdrew from the competition on Friday.

He trains in the U.S. and was selected for a PCR test at the airport upon arrival in Ottawa, where he tested positive. Gogolev won silver at the national championships in 2019 when he was just 14.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 8, 2022.

The Canadian Press