Canada's Duhamel, Radford win again at NHK Trophy

Meagan Duhamel and Eric Redford of Canada perform during the pairs short program of NHK Trophy figure skating in Nagano, central Japan on Nov. 27, 2015. (Koji Sasahara / AP Photo)

NAGANO, Japan -- Canada's Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford are golden once again.

The pairs world champions won the NHK Trophy on Saturday, stretching their unbeaten streak to more than a year.

Duhamel, from Lively, Ont., and Radford, from Balmertown, Ont., had a couple of mishaps in their free program to Adele's "My Hometown," including a fall on their quad throw Salchow. But their score of 202.72 was enough to win their fifth consecutive Grand Prix.

"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."

The Canadians easily qualified for the Grand Prix Final next month in Barcelona.

"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."

Xiaoyu Yu and Yang Jin of China were second, while Americans Alexa Scimeca and Chris Knierim were third. Lubov Iliushechkina and Dylan Moscovitch of Toronto were fifth.

Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu set a record score for the second straight night to win the men's event. The Japanese skater won the free program with 216.07 points, surpassing the 196.75 set by Canada's Patrick Chan in 2013. Hanyu's total score of 322.40 points was 55.97 ahead of China's silver medallist Jin Boyang. Takahito Mura of Japan was third.

Elladj Balde of Pierrefonds, Que., was 11th.

Chan, second to Hanyu at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, 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."

Hanyu and Boyang qualified for the Final, Dec. 10-13. Japan's Daisuke Murakami is the sixth qualifier, joining Javier Fernandez, Chan and Shoma Uno.

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.

World silver medallist Satoko Miyahara won the women's event to clinch a place in the GP Final. Courtney Hicks of the United States was second, followed by three-time world champion Mao Asada with 182.99.

Kaetlyn Osmond of Marystown, N.L., moved up two spots after the short program to finish sixth overall 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."

With files from The Associated Press.