For Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon, postponing retirement is looking like a very wise move.

The Montreal natives skated a strong compulsory to finish well ahead of the 15 other couples vying for the national title in the ice dance competition at the Canadian figure skating championships in Halifax.

Marie-France Dubreuil, left, and Patrice Lauzon took a commanding lead in the compulsory portion of the ice dance competition.
(Katsumi Kasahara/ Associated Press)

Dubreuil and Lauzon openly contemplated retirement early last year. However, they struck silver at the world championships last March and decided that they would continue competing.

Dubreuil and Lauzon executed the Golden Waltz compulsory with little difficulty, earning a score of 41.06 points. That is less than a point below their personal best for a compulsory dance and puts them well on their way to capturing their fourth straight national title, and fifth overall.

"We like compulsories a lot and this dance is one of our favourite ones," Lauzon said. "It's very demanding technically.

"This one is as hard to do physically and technically as an [original program]. It's fun to do and it's very nice to get a high score in this one."

Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, from London, Ont., sit a distant second with 34.98, Chantal Lefebvre and Arseniy Markov of LaSalle, Que., are third with 30.82 and Lauren Senft of Vancouver and Leif Gislason of Winnipeg rank fourth with 30.70.

"We feel a little bit like parents," Dubreuil said. "We know that we're the veterans and we feel excited about what [youngsters] is under us.

"Today, I thought just about having fun and floating on the ice, making people cheer and clap, take it all in — positive energy to move on to the rest of the season."

The original dance goes Saturday and the free dance on Sunday.

With files from the Canadian Press