Virtue and Moir skate to third Four Continents Ice Dance title

The event is serving as a test event for the 2018 Olympic Winter Games and the 2010 Olympic Champions made sure to lay down a marker of intent.

They delivered a strong free dance, collecting a level four for their lifts, the twizzles, the diagonal step sequence and the spin and a level three for the circular step sequence.

It saw them accrue a new personal best with 117.20 points, accumulating 196.95 points overall.

Moir said: "What an honor for Tessa and I to be Four Continents Champions. It was obviously a goal of ours just to qualify for this event at the beginning of the year. It was such a great competition.

"Today was an interesting performance for us as we left a couple of points on the board, but it was really special for us to be in that venue. We really felt the energy and we're really happy with certain parts of our performance.

"We're going to be pretty excited, looking forward to the next five weeks for the World Championship which is in Helsinki, Finland."

Americans Maia and Alex Shibutani earned the silver medal with 191.85 points overall while teammates Madison Chock and Evan Bates were third on 185.58. Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue completed a strong showing for team USA by coming fourth at 180.82 points.

Elsewhere on Friday, the men's competition got underway with Nathan Chen leading the way after the short program.

The American scored 103.12 for his routine, edging out Japanese duo Shoma Uno and Yuzuru Hanyu on 100.28 and 97.04 respectively. The competition concludes with the free skate on Sunday. Sportsbeat 2017