Vanessa James of Scarborough, Ontario, and Canadian Olympic gold medalist Eric Radford of Winnipeg, Manitoba still made the 2022 Canadian Olympic team on Sunday despite not participating in the long program of the pairs competition at the 2022 Canadian Figure Skating Championships in Ottawa, Ontario. The reason for their absence is because they both contracted coronavirus before Christmas according to Lori Ewing of The Canadian Press, and felt they were not ready to perform at their best in the long program after struggling with a fourth place spot in the short program.
James and Radford have a tremendous figure skating resume. However, they have done extremely well in the pairs event with other skaters in the past. Radford won the gold medal in the team competition at the 2018 Olympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang, silver medal in there team competition at the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, and bronze medal in the team competition at the 2018 Olympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang with Megan Duhamel of Sudbury, Ontario for Canada. James won a bronze medal at the 2018 World Figure Skating Championships in Milan, Italy with partner Morgan Cipres while representing France.
Eleven other Canadian figure skaters will represent Canada at the 2022 Olympic Winter Games in Beijing. They are men’s singles skaters Keegan Messing of Edmonton, Alberta and Roman Sadovsky of Vaughan, Ontario, women’s singles skater Madeline Schizas of Oakville, Ontario, pairs figure skaters Kirsten Moore-Towers of St. Catharines, Ontario, and Michael Marinaro of Scarborough, Ontario, and the ice dance teams of Piper Gilles of Toronto, Ontario and Paul Poirier of Unionville, Ontario; Laurence Fournier Beaudry of Greenfield Park, Quebec, and Nikolaj Sorensen of Montreal, Quebec; and Marjorie Lajoie of Boucherville, Quebec, and Zachary Lagha of St-Hubert, Quebec.
