Ukraine duo win ice dancing gold medal at Skate Canada

Patrick White, Reuters, Quebec City

Ukraine's Elena Grushina and Ruslan Goncharov were crowned ice dancing champions at the Skate Canada International competition on Sunday.

The Ukrainian duo won over the judges with their slow-moving routine, wrapping up a four-day event that was testing a new judging system.

"We are very happy. It is the second gold medal in our life and (our second) this season," Grushina told reporters at the Quebec City Coliseum.

The pair also won a gold medal last week at Skate America in Spokane, Washington.

"We want to take a gold medal in Europe and at the world championships," she said. "We liked how we skated at this competition. It is good for our confidence."

Canada's Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon bagged the silver with an inspired display.

"It was a bit of different concept. We did not want to do anything we did in the past so we started fresh: new coach, new everything," Dubreuil told reporters.

Russian pair Svetlana Kulikova and Arseni Markov were awarded the bronze to claim their first medal ever.

The competition was the second of six on the International Skating Union (ISU) Grand Prix program leading up to the world championships. The next will be held in Germany this week.

For the second time at a major ISU event, the 10 marks that flashed across the scoreboard for each competitor were not attributed to a particular judge.

No one knew which seven of the 10 judges were selected to have their scores count towards the competitors' placements.

The new judging system also involved a computerized system that would let judges evaluate each component of a skater's program.

"It is a complete success," said Ted Barton, an ISU consultant. The system is expected to be adopted officially by 2004 although not everyone approves of it.

The new policy follows the Olympic pairs judging scandal which resulted in gold medals being awarded to both the Russian duo Yelena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze and to Canadian pair Jamie Sale and David Pelletier at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.