World ice dance champions Meryl Davis and Charlie White of the United States narrowly outpointed Canada's Olympic gold medallists Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir to win a fifth straight Grand Prix Final title Saturday.
Going out with a hair-thin 0.07-point lead from Friday's short program, Davis and White dazzled with breath-taking moves in the free dance, featuring lifts and steps to the music of "Scheherazade" by N. Rimski-Korsakov.
They collected 113.69 points for the free dance and won the overall title with 191.35 points, 1.35 points better than the Canadians, the 2012 world champions, in a possible preview of the ice dance gold-medal showdown at the Sochi Olympics in February.
Nathalie Pechalat and Fabian Bourzat of France finished third overall with 169.11, including 102.48 from the free skate.
"I think we are feeling really positive, kind of gearing up to work as hard as ever for Sochi," Davis said.
"We have been competing against them since before we were teenagers," said the 26-year-old about the Canadian couple. "The continued rivalry between us helped us and we are very fortunate."
Japan's two-time former world champion Mao Asada overcame a fall and erratic jumps to win the women's title for a fourth time.
With a four-point lead from the short program on Thursday, Asada crashed after an opening triple axel in the free skate and under-rotated her next element, another 3.5-revolution jump.
The 2010 Olympic silver medallist went on to nail five triple jumps but under-rotated two combination doubles.
Despite the errors, skating to "Piano Concerto No. 2" by Rachmaninov, Asada hit a maximum level-four in three spins and one step sequence to top the free-skate table with 131.66 points.
The 23-year-old won the title with a total of 204.02, followed by Russia's 15-year-old Julia Lipnitskaia at 192.07 and US national champion Ashley Wagner at 187.61.
The final brought together the top six finishers in each category after the six-round Grand Prix series. Each skater was allowed to compete only in two of the events.
Reigning Olympic and world champion Kim Yu-Na of South Korea skipped the series to recover from a foot injury. She has come back to competition at the second-tier Golden Spin event in Zagreb, Croatia, also under way this weekend.
