Canada's Virtue, Moir lead after short dance at Four Continents
Gabrielle Daleman, Kaetlyn Osmond sit 1-2 after ladies short
Canada's Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir continued to build on their incredible comeback season with another strong short program at the Four Continents in Pyeongchang, Korea on Wednesday.
The duo led the pack with a score of 79.75. Americans Maia Shibutani and Alex Shibutani sit in second with 76.59 ahead of Madison Chock and Evan Bates, who scored 74.67.
"Tessa and I were pretty happy actually with our performance," Moir said. "We made a little bit of a technical error in the middle of it, so it's not ideal obviously, especially in the short program where we really have to capitalize on those technical points. But we came out and felt like we attacked it. We've been training this program really hard."
Two other Canadian pairs are also in contention with Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje in fifth, while Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier will have some work to do to improve on their seventh-place position.
Virtue and Moir have previously won the Four Continents title twice and are coming off a golden performance at the Grand Prix final in December.
Daleman, Osmond on top after ladies short
Gabrielle Daleman and Kaetlyn Osmond helped score a Canadian 1-2 finish in the ladies short program.
Daleman opened with a triple toeloop-triple toeloop and cleanly landed a triple lutz and a double axel for 68.25 points. Osmond fell on the landing of her double axel and was 0.04 back of Daleman.
Elizabet Tursynbaeva of Kazakhstan (66.87) is third heading into the free program, set for Saturday.
"It was a fight tonight, but I'm happy with what I was able to accomplish and with the overall package," Daleman said. "It's been great competing in Korea for my second Four Continents and it is just so motivational and inspiring to compete in the Olympic rink."
Canadian pairs skaters Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford sit third after the pairs short program with a score of 74.31, behind the Chinese tandems of Sui Wenjing and Han Cong (80.75) Yu Xiaoyu and Zhang Hao (75.20).
Fellow Canadians Liubov Ilyushechkina and Dylan Moscovitch (73.04) are fourth while Kirsten Moore-Towers and Michael Marinaro (70.89) are right behind in fifth.
The Four Continents offers a sneak peak of the 2018 Winter Olympics as it takes place in the same arena where the event will be held in February 2018.
The ice dance free program will be streamed live Thursday at 11:30 p.m. ET on CBCSports.ca.
With files from The Associated Press