'A team for everybody to be excited about'
There is no place Lia Pereira and Trennt Michaud would rather be than on the ice together, chasing big dreams as an up-and-coming Canadian pair team that is just getting started.
Editor’s note: The following story is based on a series of interviews done back in January. It was meant to appear in an issue of International Figure Skating Magazine several months ago, but sadly the owner and publisher of IFS passed away suddenly at the end of February and that publication is no more. I have decided to share it with readers in this space and, outside of a few minor tweaks, it is being presented in the manner in which it would have appeared in the magazine. And to the people interviewed for it … sorry this took so long!
For Lia Pereira, it was a most unexpected opportunity. For Trennt Michaud, it was the lifeline he was looking for to extend his competitive skating career.
It is a pairs partnership that had to rush to reach the starting line, given the late beginning to it all. But in what has been a condensed first season together, the Canadian duo is already showing signs that even bigger things might be possible in the years to come.
“Honestly, tons,” Michaud, 26, shared in January in describing the potential he sees in his still burgeoning partnership with the 18-year-old Pereira. “We are just getting started. It’s only been 4½ months and I am so excited with the progress we have made so far. Looking at this long term, I am really excited.”
Though they just teamed up back in August 2022, Pereira and Michaud quickly found success, winning gold medals at both the Ontario Sectionals in November and the Skate Canada Challenge in early December. At their first international assignment a week later, the duo earned the bronze medal at the Golden Spin of Zagreb in Croatia.
They followed that up with a bronze-medal finish in their first Canadian Championships in January in Oshawa, Ontario. Based on their efforts there, Skate Canada assigned the duo to the Four Continents Championships in Colorado Springs in February, and the World Championships in March in Saitama, Japan.
The duo made the most of both opportunities, and then some. At Four Continents, Pereira and Michaud finished just off the podium in fourth place. Their World Championships debut was especially notable, with the couple finishing an impressive sixth overall — included a fourth-place standing in the free skate. Adding to the achievement, Pereira and Michaud produced personal best scores across the board on the season’s biggest stage.
“This is what we live for and we’re happy that we were able to, first of all get here, and put out two great skates, so nothing better (than this),” Pereira, 19, said after their free skate in Saitama.
Indeed, it has been a whirlwind of a first season for the new team. Though it was a rush to get started back in the summer, there was no doubt Pereira and Michaud wanted to jump in with both feet.
“Right from the get-go, we knew we wanted to compete this season,” said Pereira, an effervescent teenager who smiles easily and often. “We didn’t want to wait, especially with the timing; it came (together) so quickly so we thought, why not showcase it? It was definitely a shorter time than most people, but I think we handled it quite well.”
It is surely something that neither skater saw in their future even just a year ago. At the 2022 Canadian Championships in Ottawa, Michaud and Evelyn Walsh turned in their finest performances of the season in placing second in the senior pairs event. They were crushed not to be selected for the Canadian team that went to the 2022 Olympic Winter Games in Beijing but would go on to place sixth at the World Championships in France — by far their highest career placement at that event.
With Canadian champions Kirsten Moore-Towers and Michael Marinaro headed off to retirement and Vanessa James and Eric Radford also calling an end to their careers, it seemed Walsh and Michaud — who had just finished their sixth season as a team — were set up to be the leading Canadian pair heading into a new quadrennial.
But on Aug. 5, Walsh suddenly announced her retirement, citing a desire to continue her education full-time at Western University in her hometown of London, Ontario. The timing of the move caught Michaud and the duo’s coaching team by surprise, to say the least.
“We have known that she was always very passionate about her schooling. We knew that she was a little frustrated with doing university part time,” said Alison Purkiss, who coached the duo at the Brant Skating Club in Brantford, Ontario. “She’s at Western now, but when we were training in Brantford, she was at Laurier (University in) Brantford. She wasn’t in the program she wanted to be in, so that side of her life had been … not disappointing, but maybe not living up to her expectations for a while.
“So we weren’t shocked, but it was just surprising, the timing of it.”
‘A bit of a surprise’
Michaud echoed that sentiment, saying “it was a little bit of a surprise to both of us, the timing of it. But we both completely respected her decision right away. That’s what her decision was, and we fully supported it.”
(Walsh spent last season on the varsity figure skating team at Western, a group which also included Natalie D’Alessandro, a former Canadian junior champion and world junior silver medallist in ice dance with Bruce Waddell. That team’s longtime head coach is Alma Moir, mother of two-time Olympic champion Scott Moir, now the head coach and managing director of the Ice Academy of Montreal’s Ontario campus).
Looking back now, Michaud admits there were at least a few moments of wondering what would come next for him, though he was determined to continue his career (“I love skating too much” to stop, he said). The question was with whom.
“I didn’t have too many days of feeling that way but for sure, definitely for a few moments you are like … as Ally said, even with a normal job, you think ‘oh, what’s next?’”
Purkiss also felt the same concern for a brief time.
“It is a very real concern with all athletes and teams. (It’s like) when you get released from a hockey team or you get benched from a basketball team, and you want to know where your next (opportunity is), or am I done? It’s a scary thing,” she explained.
“But one of the gifts of the pandemic we all went through is you can take a beat and think about your next step and recognize that this is not the end. We will find something else. What else do you want to pursue, what else do you want to accomplish?”
Soon enough, Purkiss’ thoughts turned to a novice pair team she coached back in the 2017-18 season. Though they were together for just a single campaign, Pereira and James Robart-Morgan left an impression on her — especially Pereira, who had gone on to carve out a singles career of her own and placed 14th at 2022 World Junior Championships. Early in August, she struck gold at the Cranberry Cup, an international event in Boston.
“I taught Lia in novice, and I have wanted to continue teaching her pairs ever since, but it just hasn’t been the right match,” said Purkiss. “And then with Evelyn’s retirement and Trennt wanting to continue, she was really my only choice. As soon as they stepped on the ice together, I could tell it was going to work.”
Michaud had the same feeling almost immediately, too, and that sentiment has only become more amplified as the duo continued to progress during the season.
“I could tell this could be something special. Alison and I both said that right away, as soon as we did our first skate together,” he explained. “I try to tell (Pereira) as much as I can without sounding annoying about it, that she does amazing. The joke has been she does a hundred new things every day, and every day it’s still a hundred new things. I can’t tell her enough about how amazing a partner she is.”
Pereira admits now to a feeling of shock when the opportunity was first presented to her. At the time, she was busily preparing for her own season at the Milton Skating Club west of Toronto, where she trains under the direction of coaches Nancy Lemire and Derek Schmidt. Her long-time training mate there is two-time Canadian women’s champion Madeline Schizas.
Then came the call that would change the direction of her season and make it much more hectic. But Pereira, who feels joy every second she is on the ice and cannot get enough of it, embraces each moment of this new opportunity.
“Well, my initial reaction was like ‘whaat?’ The whole situation, I was kind of shocked,” Pereira said, her face displaying the emotion she felt at the time. “But after some further thought, a couple days later I was like ‘yeah, I want to at least give it a try.’ We might as well try out, see how it goes, see what I remember, what I can still do and that sort of thing.
“I remember a couple of years after I retired that part of my career, I did watch some other pair practices and reminisced about what it used to be like. It was never in my plan to go this route, but I am happy that it worked out.”
While Pereira could draw a bit from her brief foray into pairs five years ago, it truly is a whole new game for her now.
“I remembered a lot of things but me and my old partner, we were both new (to pairs at the time), so some of the quality of things we did was not even close to this calibre,” she said.
“It definitely was a little bit intimidating at first when the whole thing started, and we wanted to try out. But now that we have competed a few times and we are at nationals, and been together four or five months, I feel pretty good now.”
Double duty
Pereira, however, has no plans to give up on her solo ambitions — at least not yet. While the new duo began to plot its first season together, Pereira took time out to compete at a Junior Grand Prix event in late August in Courchevel, France, where she placed sixth. She was also in the women’s field at Finlandia Trophy, a Challenger Series event, at the beginning of October and finished 15th there.
The season got even busier for Pereira at both the Skate Canada Challenge and nationals, where she performed double duty and competed in both events. At Canadians, she placed second in the women’s short program before fading in the long and winding up fifth overall. But if Pereira was weary from all her work in Oshawa, she hardly showed it. And she is not ready to give up on either one just yet.
“We’re not really focusing on that right now,” she said when asked about whether she will eventually have to drop one of the two. “I love what I do, and I love to be at the rink. I love to skate singles and I love to skate pairs, so I’m not really in the position to choose right now. We’ve kind of made it work, even halfway through the season, so I imagine we will be able to continue this. There has been no decision yet.”
Pereira’s unique situation also required some extra planning to make it all work. She and Michaud split their training between Brantford and Milton to accommodate Pereira’s needs in singles.
“We go to Milton twice a week and she comes to Brantford three times a week. We just balance it out that way,” said Purkiss. “It’s been great, because Nancy and Derek are an integral part of the pair team as well. They work with us just as much as anyone else and it’s been amazing.”
When in Milton, Pereira and Michaud will often share practice time with Schizas, something he believes has benefited them all. And they ended up travelling together to Croatia to compete at Golden Spin.
“When you are getting to this tier of any sport, it becomes lonely and there are less people doing it. Having Maddie to train with a few days a week for us is great,” Michaud explained. “Lia is also doing it with her in singles, but we push each other and help each other out.
“Some days, Maddie says we are her Golden Retrievers of positive energy. For us, too, it’s good because you see (Schizas) when you are not having a good day, and then you can still pull through and do it. You’re not alone in it, so it’s been great for all of us.”
While they went quietly about their business in the fall, Pereira and Michaud climbed on to their biggest stage yet in Oshawa. Their choice of short program music, “Where We Come Alive” by Ruelle, seemed appropriate for the occasion and they placed fourth in the segment. “Pirates of the Caribbean” provided the soundtrack for the free program that elevated the duo to the bronze-medal spot on the podium.
There was a buzz about the new team in Oshawa, and that’s exactly what they hoped to produce. They were far from perfect, to be sure, but Pereira and Michaud went home from their first nationals together satisfied with what had transpired.
“At the end of the day, I just wanted to put out two great skates with Lia to just showcase to everybody that we’re here and we’re getting ready to be here for the next four years and be a team for everybody to be excited about,” said Michaud. “At least, I hope everybody felt that way.”
They also know the best is yet to come. And they cannot wait to see what is next.
“We always say ‘is there anywhere else you’d rather be right now?’” Pereira said with a smile. “And the answer is always no.”
On June 28, Pereira and Michaud learned they had received two senior Grand Prix assignments for the 2023-24 season. They will be Canada’s lone pairs entry at the Series opener, Skate America, from Oct. 20-22 in Allen, Texas. They are also scheduled to compete at the Grand Prix de France from Nov. 3-5 in Angers.
(ALL PHOTOS: Flavio Valle/Skate Canada)