Canadian Championships: 'We're going to be Lia and Trennt and take our own path'
Pereira and Michaud still have a bright future ahead of them in their still-young partnership, but the present also looks pretty sweet right now to this pair team.
When last we saw Lia Pereira and Trennt Michaud at the Canadian figure skating championships, they were just four months into learning what their pairs partnership could possibly produce. There was a whole lot of shiny and new, and plenty of potential. Everything you’d expect at that point.
One year later, there’s still some of that newness afoot, and that sort of thing is always invigorating. Especially when it is supported by the kind of results Pereira and Michaud have turned in this season, highlighted by medals in their first two Grand Prix events (including a gold in France) and an appearance in the first Grand Prix Final — all barely a full year into their partnership.
“It’s definitely different. We’re still experiencing a ton of firsts,” said Michaud, 27. “This is Lia’s first nationals just being a pairs skater. Last year, she was doing both, so it was a lot crazier. It’s been really great.”
There was more new on display Friday at WinSport Arena, with Pereira and Michaud breaking out a revamped version of their short program, skated to “River” by Bishop Briggs. It was skated relatively cleanly, with the duo ending the night in second spot with a 66.04 score, just 0.82 points behind reigning Canadian champions Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps.
The new version features a new musical lead-in that is softer in tone, along with changes in entries into elements like twists, lifts and side-by-side jumps. It was all done after gaining feedback from judges, coaches and some of their skater peers. The end result is a program with some real freshness to it.
“It felt like kind of a new season debut for us midway through the season,” said the 19-year-old Pereira. “We kind of knew picking that short program music was a bit different … we wanted to stand out and I think we did that. We still loved the music and didn’t want to fully stray away from it. We wanted to keep the base to it.
“But it’s also just pushing ourselves. We haven’t been skating together that long, so continuing to push different pieces of music and different choreography styles is our goal for the rest of our careers.”
And that career, as we have mentioned already, is still very much in the early stages. But given their success already — that rush job of a first season ended with a sixth-place finish at the World Championships — it is easy to see why these two have even loftier goals for their future.
“We have goals for what we want to do, but I don’t have a set, specific plan to get there because we’re going to be Lia and Trennt, and take our own way and be our own skaters, which is also really exciting,” said Michaud. “I had that thought right from the start … We’re not trying to be anybody else, we’re just going to be Lia and Trennt and take our own path.
“We want to be Canadian champions one day, we want to go the Olympics, we want to be World medallists … And still make sure we remember to take care of ourselves. If we take care of what we can do, then we’ll get those results.”
Added Pereira: “Now in the second half of the season, we’re trying to really refine everything and have our heads a little more on scores and placement, because we know that’s where we want to end up and where we can go.”
As for Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps, their minds all season have been on the biggest prize of them all — a gold medal at the World Championships in Montreal, where they live and train. That’s why they feel a sense of disappointment when mistakes happen like on Friday, when a scary fall on a throw marred their performance. But this is also the team that produced an out of this world brilliant free program at Skate Canada International that was the stuff of World champions. They’re very aware their ceiling is that high. And so they press on, always looking forward.
“It’s a new day tomorrow,” said Deschamps. “We have to leave what happened tonight behind and restart tomorrow.”
Chiu for the show
Remember all the talk about how this was the year we’d see a wide open duel for the senior men’s title? Um, scratch that thought. It may already be game, set and match for Wesley Chiu after what we saw Friday night.
The 18-year-old from Richmond, British Columbia, turned in the performance of the night in the men’s short program on a night in which the three other skaters considered prime contenders for the men’s crown — Roman Sadovsky, Conrad Orzel and Stephen Gogolev — all had meltdowns of varying degrees and sit seventh, 10th and 13th, respectively.
Chiu, on the other hand, laid down a quad toe-triple toe combo to start his program and rolled on from there, producing a personal best score of 88.98 that is double digits better than the chasing pack. Another B.C. skater, Aleksa Rakic, stands second with 75.49 points, followed by Anthony Paradis of Quebec (74.16).
“It was a personal best by six points, I believe,” Chiu said afterward in talking about his skate. “Being first after the short program is amazing, but there’s also a lot of work to be done tomorrow. It’s time to reset and start from 0-0 and go from there.”
(if that last line sounds like a hockey quote, know that Chiu is a big fan of the puck game. And a Vancouver Canucks fan, to be exact).
Chiu admitted he arrived in Calgary with a “good feeling” about his chances, knowing his training had gone well in the weeks leading up to the event.
“I wouldn’t say I knew I had this in the bag,” he said.
After Friday night, we might need to get that bag — and the gold medal — ready for Chiu. After two straight bronze medals at this event, it might be his time.
If there’s anyone among the top contenders who had a ready made excuse/reason for his subpar performance, it would surely be Sadovsky who, as we detailed yesterday, hadn’t competed this season for a variety of reasons (some of them almost too strange to believe). But he wasn’t having any of that suggestion when it was presented to him.
“I wouldn’t blame it on that,” he said when asked if he felt competition rusty. “I’d blame it on a momentary loss of concentration (on some jump mistakes).”
While the 68.29 points he put on the board didn’t look pretty at the time, he’s still less than six points away from a podium position. And given some of the volatility we saw on Friday night, he’s hardly out of the medal picture.
The saddest sight of the night might have been seeing Gogolev in tears after his short program. The talented teen had a back issue flare up in the days leading up to Canadians and no doubt knew there was no hope of him turning in the kind of performance he’d hoped to achieve. His coach, Lee Barkell, said later a decision had yet to be made on whether Gogolev would withdraw.
(UPDATE: Gogolev withdrew from the men’s free skate Saturday morning).
Dancing toward the podium
We know who’s going to win the senior ice dance gold medal this weekend. Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier have made that clear already, with the Grand Prix Final bronze medallists taking a commanding lead after the rhythm dance. The veteran duo from Ice Dance Elite scored 86.78 for their revamped ’80s program, skated to music by The Lover Speaks (“No More I Love You’s”) and Robert Palmer (“Addicted to Love”). That was 8.78 points better than the rest of the field in Calgary.
But it’s that “rest of the field” where some opportunity lies. Up until a few weeks ago, one would have assumed (and correctly so) that the other two spots on the podium would be occupied by Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Nikolaj Soerensen, the defending champions, and Majorie Lajoie and Zachary Lagha, last year’s silver-medal winners. But those two teams withdrew for various reasons, leaving two medal positions very wide open.
“With two withdrawals from the top of the field, that opens things up for everyone,” agreed Paul Ayer, for whom these nationals represent a Calgary homecoming (he moved to Montreal six years ago to partner up with Alicia Fabbri. And no, he says, the bitter cold this week is not anything he is used to. “Absolutely not. I don’t think any Calgarian will say that”).
Looks like it’s going to be quite the heated contest for those two positions. The 2023 bronze medallists, Marie-Jade Lauriault and Romain Le Gac, currently sit in second with 78.00 points, but Fabbri and Ayer are right on their tails at 77.75. And first-year seniors Nadiia Bashynska and Peter Beaumont are also in the medal hunt (75.64).
Lauriault and Le Gac certainly came here with medals on their minds — “we reach for the podium every time we skate,” said Lauriault — while Bashynska and Beaumont, the 2023 junior national champions, like the sound of that idea, too.
“If we get to medal, super sick, right? Anybody wants to be on the podium. We’ve always aimed for that, no matter if (certain) teams were here or not,” said Bashynska. “I mean, I’ve been aiming for podium all the time. You can be competing against 10 Olympic teams and you still want to win, right?”
Schizas leads the way
Maddie Schizas is here for any complimentary roses you want to toss her away about her comedic chops — “I think I’m hilarious,” she deadpans — but her game face was clearly still on as she discussed her short program with the media Friday afternoon. Schizas, the two-time defending national champion, is the class of the senior women’s field here in Calgary, but there’s still a bit of work to do before she collects another gold medal on Saturday.
Schizas fretted about a triple lutz that “landed heavy,” which made her tack a double toe on the back end of her planned combination instead of a triple. But the performance aspects she’s worked so hard to improve with ice dance coaches Scott Moir, Madison Hubbell and Adrian Diaz really shone through. That, she was especially happy about.
“I felt the performance was good, I really gave my all on the performance side,” the 20-year-old from Oakville, Ontario, said of her short program skated to the Spanish-themed “Farrucas” music. “The tech elements were not all there … the lutz toe, the combo … and I’ve been skating it so well in practice. But it was a good stepping stone for the second half of the season.”
Still, her score of 63.63 points was plenty good enough to earn a lead of more than five points over Kaiya Ruiter (58.25), the Calgary girl who admittedly had “the best time” skating in front of friends and family in her home rink at WinSport. Quebec’s Sara-Maude Dupuis is right behind in third (57.87). Schizas is happy to be right where she’s supposed to be, though she would have liked a bigger cushion.
“When I won my first Canadians (in 2022 in Ottawa), I won the short program by 13 points and I’ve got to say that was pretty fun. I felt really good about myself, so I was kind of hoping to do that again today,” she said. “It didn’t really happen, but I don’t really think it plays mind games in that sense. I find for the free program, a little bit more it can. Again, I remember my first title I won, I was sitting backstage and thinking ‘wow, I need 92 points (in the free skate) to win.’ And Nancy (Lemaire), my coach, was like ‘don’t you dare get anywhere close to 92 points. Don’t be playing that game with me.’”
(an aside: she didn’t. Schizas scored 126.19 points to easily take the title).
While Ruiter admitted Friday’s skate “could have gone better,” there was no wiping the smile off her face about the end result. You might recall that a year ago in Oshawa, Ontario, Ruiter won the free program with a brilliant skate and finished second overall. She’s surely take a repeat of that on Saturday.
“Something like that. I definitely want that feeling in the air,” she said.
It’s a Supremes sweep
Some of the loudest cheers of the night (accompanied by flag waving) came from one corner of WinSport Arena during the senior synchronized skating free skate on Friday night. That would have been the Les Supremes junior champions, saluting their senior counterparts after they completed the sweep of synchro gold medals at the Canadian championships.
It was a tight battle for the senior gold between two Quebec teams, with Nova winning the free skate by a hair, but Les Supremes claiming the gold with a 216.79 overall total. Nova was right behind at 213.97, with the bronze going to NEXXICE, of Burlington, Ontario (205.95).