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SENDAI, Japan: Ice dancing European champion duo Isabelle Delobel and Olivier Schoenfelder of France captured the NHK Trophy Saturday due to their strong compulsory dance that opened the event.
But the couple lost the original and free dance segments to rapidly improving Canadian pair Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir.
The French skaters collected a three-day total of 197.54, barely edging out the 196.89 earned by the Canadians in the last leg of the ISU Grand Prix series.
"I think, in this competition, the level was very high, especially technically with these younger couples," said Schoenfelder, who turned 30 on Friday.
"They are very tough. Of course, we know that we have to keep (working on) our techniques," he said.
"I am very happy with this competition. The free programme was good, for this moment. We tried to make it clean," said Schoenfelder, whose team won the Trophee Eric Bompard in Paris.
Virtue, 18, and Moir, 20, winners of Skate Canada, said they were pleased with their performance and happy to advance to the Grand Prix finals for the first time.
"We did everything we came here to do. We had a realy good OD (original dance) and free programme. We will build on it, going into our first Grand Prix finals," Moir said.
Virtue said she thought their compulsory dance was "not very up to par."
"But we are pleased with our performances and we are ready to head to the finals and build up."
In third was the Russian pair, Jana Khokhlova and Sergei Novitski, with a total 186.96.
Ten ice dancing couples took part in the event, held in northern Japan.
- AFP/yb
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