Canada's two-time world champions Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford easily won the pairs short program, while Lubov Ilyushechkina and Dylan Moscovitch were third Friday at Skate International.

Duhamel, from Lively, Ont., and Radford, from Balmertown, Ont., debuted their new throw triple Axel in their short program to Seal's "Killer," to score 78.39 points. China's Yu Xiaoyu and Zhang Hao are second, while Toronto's Ilyushechkina and Moscovitch

The Canadians have a throw quad Salchow in their long program, but rules don't allow for quads in the pairs short event.

"We thought 'OK now, how can we increase our base value of the short without a quad, and we already do the hardest jump (side-by-side triple Lutz), the only way was to learn the hardest throw triple which is the triple Axel," Duhamel said. "We only learned to throw single Axel in March, it hasn't even been a year since we learned a single, so to already be able to land the triple and do it in competition is a huge accomplishment for us.

"And we want to just keep pushing ourselves and pushing the sport."

Pushing themselves keeps things fresh, Radford added.

"Meagan and I have always said we find skating fun, day in and day out," he said. "Probably the reason I think is because we push ourselves day in and day out, and if we were just doing the same elements year after year, it would get boring. It's challenging but it's fun for us to keep pushing the sport like this."