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Chan, Virtue and Moir absent from Canadian 2014 World Figure Skating Championships roster

No Patrick Chan. No Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir. And a lot less star power for Canada at the World Figure Skating Championships, which get under way Wednesday (Tuesday night back in Canada) in Saitama, Japan.

For the men, the representatives will be Canadian No. 2 Kevin Reynolds (and his now world-famous hair), reigning world junior champion Nam Nguyen, a 15-year-old coached by Brian Orser, and 23-year-old Elladj Balde, a Russian-born Montrealer who finished fourth at the national championships.

Tangentially, Paul Bonifacio Parkinson, a Canadian who skates for Italy, is also in the men's field.

Sochi gold medalist Yuzuru Hanyu will compete. But then again, he almost has to; the competition is being held in his home country. Countryman Daisuke Takahashi, though, will not. Nor will Dennis Ten of Uzbekhistan, the Olympic bronze medalist.

Here's the streaming schedule on cbcsports.ca.

The two top Canadians, Kaetlyn Osmond and Gabrielle Daleman, will be in the ladies' field, which has only Carolina Kostner of Italy among the medalists. Gold medalist Adelina Sotnikova of Russia is listed as a substitute.

In the pairs, all three Canadian Olympic pairs will compete: Meagen Duhamel and Eric Radford, Kirsten Moore-Towers and Dylan Moscovitch and Paige Lawrence and Rudi Swiegers.

Sochi silver medalists Ksenia Stolbova and Fedor Klimov of Russia and bronze winners Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy are on hand, but not gold medalists Tatiana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov.

Virtue and Moir, who have not made any sort of announcement on their skating future, won't compete in the ice dance event, which leaves Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje as the best of the three Canadian duos in the field. Their biggest rivals, American gold medalists Meryl Davis and Charlie White, also are absent, which takes away a lot of the cachet from the event.

Here's the schedule of events (Saitama is 13 hours ahead of EDT in Canada):