NHK Trophy: Canada's Duhamel, Radford take pairs gold

Canadian figure skating pair Meaghan Duhamel and Eric Radford claimed their fifth straight victory on the ISU Grand Prix circuit on Saturday at the NHK Trophy in Nagano, Japan. 

The reigning world champions earned 202.72 points to easily take the competition and set up an appearance at the Grand Prix Final in two weeks in Barcelona.

"As was the case in the short program, we missed a few things we know we can do a lot better," Radford said.

"On the plus side, we got great execution on our pairs elements such as lifts, twists and spins. So we have a lot of good things we can bring with us to the Grand Prix Final. We may change a couple of things so we can go for a cleaner skate which we will need to do to remain competitive with the other top teams."

China's Yu and Yang Jin were second at 191.02 and Alexa Scimeca and Chris Knierim of the U.S. third at 190.66.

Despite being well ahead of the competition, Duhamel of Lively, Ont. agrees that their program needs more polishing.

"We need to go to Barcelona and do a clean short and clean long," Duhamel said. "When we skate clean programs we are in control of our own destiny. That was the situation last year and we'll do what it takes to achieve that again."

Second-year partners Lubov Iliushechkina and Dylan Moscovitch of Toronto were fifth with a personal best 180.63.

Yuzuru Hanyu sets record score 

Olympic figure skating champion Yuzuru Hanyu set a record score for the second straight night to win the NHK Trophy on Saturday and qualify for the Grand Prix Final.

Hanyu won the free skate to finish with a total of 322.40 points, 55.97 ahead of China's Jin Boyang. Takahito Mura of Japan was third with 242.21 points.

As well as the record highest total score, Hanyu's 216.07 free skate score was the highest ever, surpassing 196.75 set by Patrick Chan in 2013 at the Trophy Bompard.

Chan also held the previous record for the most overall points with 295.27.

"I just tried to execute each element carefully," Hanyu said. "I was surprised by the score and it's hard to describe my feeling now. Not all the elements were completely clean but I tried to skate carefully while believing in my practice and physical ability."

Skating to "Seimei" by Japanese composer Shigeru Umebayashi, Hanyu's dominant free program included three quad jumps and seven triples.

He also set a record score in Friday's short program.

Boyang attempted four quads in his routine "Dragon Racing." He successfully completed the first three but doubled a quad toeloop.

"Overall, I was satisfied with my components but had some small mistakes," Boyang said. "I need to improve the free skate so I can get better results."

Hanyu and Boyang qualified for December's GP Final in Barcelona. Japan's Daisuke Murakami is the sixth qualifier joining Javier Fernandez, Chan and Shoma Uno.

Elladj Balde of Pierrefonds, Que., was 11th while Kaetlyn Osmond of Marystown, N.L. moved from eighth to sixth overall after her free skate in women's singles.

Osmond was pleased to improve on her 11th place finish at Skate Canada last month.

"It was a long gap between here and Skate Canada," she said. "For me I just really wanted to go out and compete after all the training."

Shibutani pair wins ice dance gold

Maia and Alex Shibutani of the United States won the ice dance competition to book a place in figure skating's Grand Prix Final.

The Shibutanis held on to their lead from the short dance and won with 174.43 points. Russian skaters Ekaterina Bobrova and Dmitri Soloviev moved up from third place after the short program to claim second with 169.33 points.

Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue of the United States were third with 167.49 points.

All three duos qualified for the GP Final in Barcelona from Dec. 10-13.

Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje of Canada previously qualified, as well as Americans Madison Chock and Evan Bates and Italy's Anna Cappellini and Luca Lanotte.