Canadian figure skaters kicked off their Beijing Olympics on Thursday night with the first rounds of the team competition.
Ice dancers Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier notably took fourth place in the rhythm dance event presented at Capital Indoor Stadium.
This performance earned Canada seven valuable points. The Ontario duo is one of Canada’s top medal hopefuls in figure skating.
Before competing at their first Games together, Gilles and Poirier notably won Skate Canada International last October.
With their score of 82.72, the Canadians finished behind Americans Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue (86.56), Russian Olympic Committee representatives Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov (85.05) and Italians Charlène Guignard and Marco Fabbri (83.83).
In pair skating, Canadians Kirsten Moore-Towers and Michael Marinaro, both of Ontario, posted the fifth best score of the first day with a score of 67.34.
They are preceded by the Japanese, the Americans, the Russians and the Chinese who took the lead in the ranking.
On the men’s side, Roman Sadovsky had to settle for eighth place, good for three points, at the end of the short program.
By virtue of its 16 points, Canada settled into 6th place overall, dominated by the top three, the United States, the ROC and China, followed by Japan and Italy.