OTTAWA -- If competing under the pressure of their final pre-Olympic performance was the perfect test for Sochi, Scott Moir gave a failing grade Friday.
"We didn't perform under that pressure as well as we'd like to," Moir said.
Moir and partner Tessa Virtue won the short dance at the Canadian figure skating championships, but the defending Olympic champions weren't thrilled with their performance, admitting to considerable pressure competing in front of a Canadian crowd for what will likely be the last time.
And less than a month out from the Games, nothing short of perfect is good enough.
"We've been training and practising kind of lights-out and Tessa and I, we're really perfectionists and it felt like we had a couple moments today that just weren't the way we'd been training," Moir said. "That's probably the emotion you see on our faces."
Three-time world champion Patrick Chan easily won the men's short program, but it wasn't the flawless skate he had hoped for heading into Sochi. The 23-year-old from Toronto opened with a huge quadruple toe-triple toe combination, but then doubled a planned triple Axel, and doubled a triple Lutz.
Liam Firus of North Vancouver, B.C., was second with 78.93, while Kevin Reynolds of Coquitlam, B.C., scored 78.29 for third.
Earlier in the day, Kaetlyn Osmond won the women's singles short program, putting four frustrating months of injury problems behind her.
Virtue and Moir earned 76.16 points for their jazz-infused skate to music by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, but lost marks for holding a rotational lift for too long. In the lift in question, Virtue lies on her back across a spinning Moir's shoulders.
There were a few other small missteps as well.
"Just technical things," Moir explained. "I felt like I was a battling a little with my knees today, wasn't quite under the ice. . . maybe I was watching world junior (hockey) highlights or something."
Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje of Waterloo, Ont., were second with 72.68, while Alexandra Paul of Toronto and Mitchell Islam of Barrie, Ont., were third with 67.67.
Canada, which will name its Olympic team Sunday, has three ice dancing berths at the Sochi Games.
Virtue admitted the two are being tougher on themselves with the Games so close.
"I'm sure a lot of people around will think 'Oh don't be so negative,"' Virtue said. "There are a lot of positives to take from (the program). It's just the place we are in our season, it's all about process, it's all about trying to achieve the highest quality of performance possible, so we're always trying to get that."
Virtue, from London, Ont., and Moir, from Ilderton, Ont., have been living and training in a bubble of sorts the past few weeks in Canton, Mich., making a strategic decision to block out almost everything Olympic-related. They used the same approach leading into the 2010 Vancouver Games.
"It's nice when we're in the States because we don't see anything, about anything Canadian," Virtue said.
They're not even watching their own show -- the W Network's "Tessa & Scott" -- which is two episodes into the seven-episode series.
"It's just too much us," Moir said.
"It's so close to the Games, we sort of lived it already, we don't want to go back and feel the things we were feeling in August and September, especially just a few weeks short of the Olympics," Virtue added. "We're in such a great place now. . . it's better for us to block everything out and focus on every day."
Osmond, meanwhile, is halfway to clinching her spot on Canada's Olympic team, shrugging off her injury troubles with a clean short program.
The 18-year-old from Marystown, N.L., was sidelined for a good chunk of the last four months, with first an ankle injury and then a torn hamstring, and admitted to wondering at times if she'd make it back in time for Sochi.
"I have this little jump at the end of my program and I think I put more energy into that little half jump than I did into my entire program because I was so excited," Osmond said, laughing. "And when I went to do my curtsy, I couldn't help but be relieved."
Osmond landed a triple flip-triple toe loop combination, then a triple Lutz to score 70.3 points for her '60s-inspired performance to "Big Spender" and "Rich Man's Frug."
Amelie Lacoste of Delson, Que., scored 61.27 to leave her second heading into Saturday's free program.
Gabrielle Daleman, a 15-year-old from Newmarket, Ont., is third with 58.38.
Canada has two berths in women's singles for the Sochi Olympics.
Osmond, who was eighth in her world championship debut last year, suffered a stress reaction in August, and then tore her hamstring during the short program at Skate Canada in October, forcing her to withdraw before the free skate.
Her treatment included a cortisone shot and platelet-rich plasma treatment -- the injection of platelet-rich blood into an injury (three-time world champion Patrick Chan had PRP for a calf injury prior to the Vancouver Olympics).
She was off the ice for more than two weeks, and it was several weeks before she was back to doing jumps and spins.
"When I got back on the ice I could barely do my crosscuts still, so I had to work so many edges and so many stroking exercises before I could even think about jumping," Osmond said. "It was really hard during those times to even think that Nationals was coming up, time was going so fast, and I was still not even on the ice."
Osmond has only one full competition under her belt this season -- Skate Canada Challenge, a qualifying for nationals last month in Regina that she won.
"The only thing that's missing is the competition experience and the momentum, and this is going to help her so much," said her Edmonton-based coach Ravi Walia.
Osmond has come to look at the last few frustrating months as a blessing in disguise.
"I learned so much from it," she said. "It actually helped my training because it hurt to fall (after the hamstring injury), so I had to learn perfect technique. It hurt when I did the wrong technique because my leg would swing out to the side too much. So in a way it's a good thing."
