An early look back at those summer questions
Back in August, we had some queries about certain Canadian skaters that intrigued us heading into a new season. We've got a start on some of those answers already.
It’s become a bit of a tradition in this space … if doing something for the second year in a row actually counts as such a thing.
But we’re going to go there and call it that. We refer, in this case, to the series of questions we offered up as part of our season preview of sorts when it comes to figure skaters in this country. At the time, we billed them as thoughts that intrigued us the most and, if we’re being honest, most of those sentiments still remain that way four months down the road.
With the skating season slowing down for Canadians for a few weeks, we thought now might be a good time to revisit those questions and see how on track (or not) we might have been way back when the weather was, well, just a tad warmer than it is right now (depending on where you live).
We undertook this exercise at about the same time a year ago, and it was kinda fun (for me, at least). So here goes again …
Can Canada do the Worlds double for the first time since 2012?
We’ll admit the enthusiasm over what we saw the 2024 World Championships in Montreal coloured this question. But it wasn’t entirely without merit, given what we saw at the Bell Centre: Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps producing a rousing gold medal in the pairs event, and Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier winning the free dance en route to climbing up to the silver medal position in ice dance behind Americans Madison Chock and Evan Bates, who won their second straight world title.
So yeah, it wasn’t a stretch (or so we thought) to say this …
“So is it doable? Let’s just say it’s on the table for sure … a double World title for Canada in Boston is eminently possible.”
But we added this caveat …
“Just keep in mind exactly how rare that feat is before you wager your life savings on it”
So where do we stand right now? I’d say both of the statements above hold true, to a point, but right now I’ve got to lean toward removing the word ‘eminently’ from the original part of this analysis. If for no other reason than recent evidence has certainly cast some doubt on that possibility.
In the case of Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps, we missed an opportunity to get a real early barometer on their season growth when his illness caused the duo to withdraw from the Grand Prix Final in Grenoble, France. The Canadians had been the top qualifiers for that event, based on gold medals they earned at Skate Canada International and Finlandia Trophy. But Grenoble would have provided an opportunity to see where they stand compared to the other two medallists from Montreal Worlds — Germany’s Minerva Fabienne Hase and Nikita Volodin (bronze), who easily won the Final, and Japan’s Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara (silver), who placed second in France (Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps did finish third behind the Germans in an early season meeting at Nebelhorn Trophy).
Given that last season, Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps improved their game enough from a third-place finish at the Final to win Worlds, we’re certainly not discounting the possibility of them doing it again.
Now, about the other half of the potential “golden double” …
It’s been a bit of a weird fall season for Gilles and Poirier. The veteran ice dancers displayed their new programs for the first time at SCI and Halifax and showed they’ve got the goods to contend for a world title in March in Boston. But then came Finlandia, where a fall in the free dance bumped them down to a silver-medal finish behind Britain’s Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson.
Now, these things happen on occasion and you’d figure a very seasoned team would do everything to ensure it didn’t happen again. But then it did again Grenoble — this time in the rhythm dance — and that knocked Gilles and Poirier out of medal contention right away (they’d been podium finishers at the Final the previous two years). They weren’t even the highest Canadian finishers in France, placing one spot behind Majorie Lajoie and Zachary Lagha, who wound up fourth. But as we mentioned in our wrap-up of the Final, that fall may well have cost Gilles and Poirier a silver medal.
So clearly, the defending Canadian champions have some things to work on before Boston. While nobody in this space is suggesting another podium finish at Worlds won’t happen, the competition among the top five teams remains as fierce as ever. And when you make the kind of significant mistake that happened in Grenoble … yeah, you pay for it in a big way.
Which Maddie Schizas are we going to see in the coming season?
This, we thought, was a very fair — and critical — question in light of what happened to the two-time Canadian champion in the previous season. She had a decent fall season, then a disastrous free skate in Calgary that cost her a third Canadian title (or at least the opportunity to win one) … and an 18th-place finish at Montreal Worlds that was the lowest of her career.
All of that led to this thought back in August …
“So now we arrive at the crossroads that is the 2024-25 season, and the question has to be fairly asked: Where does Schizas go from here?”
The answer we got in Halifax was perhaps one of the most encouraging ones we saw from anyone all season. Though she didn’t finish on the podium — in fact, she was one spot lower (fifth) than a year ago at the same event — what actually happened on the ice spoke volumes. Schizas skated two strong programs back-to-back, something that surely didn’t happen a year ago. It was, as we suggested at the time, the kind of skating that can get her into the top 10 at Worlds (the significance of which we’ll get to in a bit).
Perhaps most importantly, she has the tangible, seeing is believing kind of evidence that it certainly can happen for her in Boston.
“It was important for me to show today that I can put out two skates back to back that are pretty decent if not perfect. Not the first time ever, but the first time in a while,” she said in Halifax. “But I was happy. Obviously, this free skate wasn’t perfect … but just getting enough of the tech out to put me above 190 points. I haven’t done that in two seasons. That was important.”
This was how we wrapped up this part of the question back in August …
“At her very best, Schizas is Canadian champion again next season and could challenge for that coveted top-10 berth at Worlds. But whether she can produce all of that … hey, that’s why we asked this question.”
Right now, I’d say all of that is still very much true. But it’s replicating what happened in Halifax that, of course, is the toughest part (Cup of China, her second Grand Prix assignment, didn’t go quite as well). The final chapters on this question will be written next month at the Canadian Championships in Laval, Que., and at Worlds in Boston if she ends up getting there.
Is Aleksa Rakic ready to be a Canadian champion?
Let’s be real here. When it comes to Canada’s men, there’s no sure thing when it comes to predicting who might win the national title in Laval. That was very true going into the season, and it’s still that way as we sit here in December following a fall season that produced a mixed bag of results.
(we’ll have more to say about this in our final question).
But to get back to the original question. It related to us saying a year ago that it might be time for Wesley Chiu to finally win a Canadian title … which he went out and did in Calgary. Chiu largely got that done with a well-skated short program that established a double-digit lead that nobody could overcome. Which was a good thing, because he didn’t win the free skate — in fact, he finished second behind the guy who was the best skater on the ice that night in bitterly cold Calgary.
And that would have been … Aleksa Rakic.
That, and an interesting conversation with the West Coast-based skater over the summer, led us to ask this question. Rakic came across as a confident young man who has a Canadian title in his sights. And while there wasn’t much from the Grand Prix to evaluate during the Grand Prix season when it comes to the Canadian men, Rakic’s efforts at SCI in Halifax were probably the best of the bunch that we saw this fall.
(for what it’s worth, Rakic won the Skate Canada Challenge earlier this month, finishing in front of Anthony Paradis and Roman Sadovsky. Again, with a strong free skate that overcame a fifth-place effort in the short).
Chiu, Sadovsky and Stephen Gogolev, who turned in a particularly good short program in Halifax, are the other acknowledged top contenders for the crown in Laval. That trio all dealt with injuries somewhere along the way this fall, so the grade on all of them has to rest at “incomplete” as this point.
Back in August, here’s the final thought we had on this query …
“It was in this space a year ago that we asked this very question about Chiu, who had lingered around the podium for a few seasons. We know how that all turned out in Calgary. Maybe some of that magic can carry Rakic to the top of the podium in Laval. Lightning does strike twice sometimes, right?”
Like we said earlier, there are no sure things when it comes to Canada’s men. But we will go as far as to say this: the opportunity is certainly there for Rakic to win the national title. Now we’ll see what happens in Laval.
How many Canadians will we see at the Grand Prix Final in Grenoble?
It had never been any better at the Final for Canadian skaters than in 2023, when the Red Maple Leaf was represented by a record three ice dance teams and two pair combinations in Beijing (and three junior pair teams as well). So certainly, it was fair to ponder whether a repeat might happen.
Here was how we put it back in August …
“Scan the Grand Prix schedule for this fall, and it’s easy to see Canada could come very close to duplicating what happened a year ago in Beijing.”
We identified three entries we believed to be sure things: the aforementioned Stellato-Dudek/Deschamps in pairs, and both Gilles/Poirier and Lajoie/Lagha in ice dance. All of them, as it turned out, did exactly as expected and made their way to Grenoble. That was the easy part of this discussion.
As for the others from 2023, we thought the pair team of Lia Pereira and Trennt Michaud had reasonably favourable draws in their two Grand Prix events (France and China), which gave them an opportunity to possibly get back to the Final. But a fifth-place finish in France ended that chance (they did earn a bronze medal in China, but even two of that colour wouldn’t have gotten them to the Final).
As for what happened to ice dancers Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Nikolaj Soerensen, their career as a team essentially ended because of this.
So what we ended up with in Grenoble would have been pretty much what we expected, had Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps not withdrawn. The downer about all of this is, of course, there was no hardware earned in Grenoble, save for a bronze picked up by Jazmine Desrochers and Kieran Thrasher in junior pairs. Not quite a repeat of Beijing, that’s for sure.
Will Canada have more than one men’s or women’s singles skater on the entry list for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Olympics?
Let’s just say I was a bit of a Debbie Downer (for those who remember that old Saturday Night Live character) when it came to this question. Actually, a little more than that. A reminder for those who’ve forgotten …
“Based on everything I saw at Montreal Worlds, there’s only way to view this at the outset of a new season. It’s a long shot, a real long shot, that Canada sees more than one entry in either discipline at Milan-Cortina 2026.”
Not exactly a ringing endorsement, is it? And it’s fair to say a lot of folks out there would still agree with that sentiment. Getting two spots in either discipline for the 2026 Winter Games isn’t going to come easily, if at all.
However …
Have to say we’re little more encouraged about the prospect of seeing two Canadian women in Milan. Circle back to what we said above about Maddie Schizas as the reason for that. As we wrote in Halifax, what she did there was worthy of top 10 in the world — now it’s a matter of making it happen in Boston. But hope is always a wonderful thing to have, and we’ve certainly got some for Canada’s women (we’ll get into this in a few weeks, but it might be the event I’m most looking forward to watching at nationals in Laval).
As for Canada’s men, it’s reality time here. With all the injuries and such, we didn’t see much of them throughout the Grand Prix season. So nothing really happened that has us juiced about the prospect of two Canadian men in Boston. As we’ve mentioned, it’s going to require somebody to step up and get a top 10 at 2025 Worlds. Not sure we’ve anybody ready to get there just yet.
We’ll bring back this note of optimism (?) to conclude this exercise …
“While the words ‘long shot’ are the correct ones to use here, that’s not the same as calling it impossible. So yes, I’m still saying there’s a chance. But that being said, don’t go betting the farm on it, either.”
It’s been a year, right?
So this missive marks the final bit of writing on Canadian skating for the 2024 calendar year. We’re taking a break for some much-earned holiday time (after a spot of football commentary on Tuesday), and perhaps a bit of time to reflect on what this space has been able to contribute in the past 12 months.
We froze our asses off at nationals in Calgary in January. We made it to Montreal in March for a glorious World Championships that was exhilarating from start to finish. There was some pointed analysis along the way, and also a chance to introduce some new faces in Canadian skating (or at least provide a bit of a deeper dive on a few lesser known ice artists). That kind of blank canvas is something I’ve always enjoyed painting on for the first time, and hopefully there will be plenty more of that in the year to come (at least that’s certainly the plan here).
Once again, I’d like to take a moment to thank everyone who supports this venture by reading the words produced here. Subscriber levels have continued to grow throughout 2024 and so has the weekly readership. It’s very heartening to someone who first embarked upon this journey as a passion project and continues to see this as something that is very worth it. All of your support merely validates that sentiment.
In closing, I’d like to wish each and everyone a Merry Christmas … or whatever it is you celebrate at this time of year. May you and your loved ones have a holiday season to truly savour and cherish, and all the best in 2025.
See y’all again soon on this journey …