Canadian champions Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon qualified for figure skating's Grand Prix Final by winning their second meet of the season Saturday in Nagano, Japan.

The world silver medallists used a romantic blues routine to win the $18,000 US top prize at the NHK Trophy meet. The Montrealers also won the HomeSense Skate Canada International title in Victoria on Nov. 5.

Canadians Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon hold their trophies during Saturday's award ceremony in Japan.
(Toru Yamanaka/AFP/Getty Images)

Skaters are allowed to accumulate points from a maximum of two of the six Grand Prix meets, and NHK Trophy was the sixth. The top six in the standings in each of the four disciplines go to St. Petersburg, Russia, for the GP Final, Dec. 14-17.

The only other Canadians who earned tickets were national pairs champions Valerie Marcoux of Gatineau, Que., and Craig Buntin of Kelowna, B.C., who were third in their NHK Trophy event Friday. It was their second third-place showing this season and they wound up sixth in the final series standings.

Joannie Rochette missed out on St. Petersburg by the narrowest of margins.

Canada's champion from Ile Dupas, Que., finished seventh in the women's standings. She was tied with sixth-placed Sarah Meier in points but the Swiss champ got the nod for the GP Final based on the total scores tiebreaker. Rochette will be the first alternate if one of the top six can't go to St. Petersburg.

Dubreuil and Lauzon have a wonderful free dance in which they pretend they are letting loose at their wedding reception. They perform the dance to At Last by Etta James. They had planned to wed this year had they decided to retire, but they postponed the marriage when they opted to continue in competitive skating.

The four-minute dance includes a spectacular straight line lift with Lauzon skating backwards on one foot and balancing her in front. The performance is also dramatized by combination spins that few other couples can match.

"We were satisfied with our performance," said Dubreuil. "We had a very stressful time between Skate Canada and this one because we started a new short program (original dance) and didn't get to practise the free dance and we've changed parts of the free dance as well.

"We changed the last parts to avoid being on two feet and to add difficulty in the linking footwork."

Russians Jana Khokhlova and Sergei Novitski won silver and Americans Melissa Gregory and Denis Petukhov took bronze.

Japanese sweep

Japanese skaters swept the NHK women's medals. Mao Asada finished first, Fumie Suguri was second and Yukari Nakano was third. Asada and Suguri advance to the GP Final, and so does teammate Miki Ando, who qualified earlier in the series.

Asada won the GP final last season but was not eligible for the Olympics because she was too young. She needed to win here to qualify again after finishing third in Skate America.

Also among the top six in the final GP standings are Yu-Na Kim of South Korea, who trains in Toronto, and Julia Sebestyen of Hungary.

In men's singles, which concludes Sunday with the free skating, Daisuke Takahashi was narrowly ahead of Japanese teammate Nobunari Oda, who trains in Barrie, Ont., after the short program. Chengjiang Li of China was third.

Emanuel Sandhu of Richmond Hill, Ont., did not enter the NHK Trophy meet and hasn't earned enough points to get to St. Petersburg. Canadian champion Jeff Buttle of Smooth Rock Falls, Ont., didn't compete on the GP circuit because of a back injury.