Canada's Vanessa James and Eric Radford: We're not leaving Beijing without a fight

"That’s what the goal will be tomorrow: to fight.”

Those were the words of Vanessa James, one half of Canada's figure skating pair along with Eric Radford, and they face an uphill task to get on the podium in the pair skating event at Beijing 2022.

The Canadians finished with a disappointing score of 63.03 in the short program on Friday that sees them sitting in 12th place out of 16 teams ahead of the free skate on Saturday at 19:00 local time at the Capital Indoor Stadium.

“I was very disappointed in my jumps because I haven’t missed one since I’ve been here," James told Olympics.com afterward. "It’s very disappointing to not get it done when it counted. It’s something that we need to work on for tomorrow. I’m just going to have to concentrate and hone in."

James, 36, is now a four-time Olympian but competed for France at Vancouver 2010, Sochi 2014 and PyeongChang 2018.

“But it was an amazing performance for us. We felt really good and comfortable and at home on the ice. It feels good to be here, so we’re going to continue on.”

MORE: Top things to know about Canada's Vanessa James and Eric Radford

'It's always a pleasure and honour to skate with Vanessa'

Radford, 37, is a three-time Winter Olympic medallist having won a gold medal in the team event and a bronze in the pair skating event at PyeongChang 2018, and a silver medal in the team event at Sochi 2014.

"She apologised to me, and she does not need to," Radford said of James' mistake. "It’s always a pleasure and honour to skate by Vanessa’s side.

"Like Vanessa said, this was a great performance. We skated from the heart. There was an unfortunate mistake but we are human, we can make mistakes. It’s just unfortunate timing. But we won’t make the same mistake twice, and tomorrow we’ll go out and have a really good skate.”

James / Radford on gratitude

In many ways, it's amazing the pair are here in Beijing. They came out of retirement to compete together and at first believed they would only be skating in shows.

“Along this incredible adventure we’ve had ups and downs but we’ve always persevered and learned when we can to make ourselves better," Radford said. "This is just another opportunity to do that.

“Even one year ago I could have never imagined being where we are right now. To compete at the Olympics is every athlete’s dream. I’m getting to do it for a third time, so I have a lot of gratitude to be here, and I enjoyed every second of that performance, mistake and all.”

When the pair teamed up in 2021, after about five days of training, they realised they could take this further than they first thought.

“It’s been incredible," James said. "He [Radford] is kind, patient and knowledgeable. We get along so well. We work well together. We have the same work ethic, and we’re both very supportive of each other. He’s become a really great friend, so I feel very, very lucky and honoured to be skating with him.”

Going into the free skate portion of the competition, the pair will be using their years of experience to rise above and put themselves in with a fighters' chance of a medal.

"We’ll definitely have a fighting spirit," James said. "Today, we wanted to enjoy it and not have a lack of concentration. But tomorrow it’s going to be about digging deep, and I think that’s what we’re really good at it. That’s what the goal will be tomorrow: to fight."

Keep up with all the action in our Live Blog updates throughout Beijing 2022, here.