BOSTON - Canadian Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford made a successful defence of the pairs crown at the figure skating world championships here on Saturday when overnight leaders Sui Wenjing and Han Cong from China settled for silver.

The Shanghai world championships winners performed a flawless free skate program for 153.81 points to clinch the title with a total of 231.99.

Sui and Han, leading a field of Olympic and world champions after the short program, posted 143.62 in the long for a total of 224.47 to come second in as many years.

Leading by just 2.5 points after the short, Sui and Han executed their quadruple twist lift but she couldn't hang onto the throw quad salchow landing and tumbled to the ice.

German-French pairing Aliona Savchenko and Bruno Massot finished third in their world championship debut with 216.17 points overall after earning 141.95 in the free skate.

Russia's 2014 Olympic and world silver medalists Ksenia Stolbova and Fedor Klimov finished fourth with 214.48 points.

Another Russian duo, 2014 Olympic gold medalists and 2013 world champions Tatiana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov struggled with some of their elements and dropped from third after the short program to sixth overall (205.81).