#SCNats25: 'It's just makes me feel better'
It's a piece of music that Maddie Schizas was saving for the Olympic season. But she's decided the Canadian Championships are the right place to unveil a new free program.
LAVAL, Quebec — Quite frankly, Maddie Schizas admits, she’s surprised she was able to keep this big piece of news under wraps until … well, right now.
But the cat is out of the bag, so to speak. And the 21-year-old from Oakville, Ontario, is breaking out a brand new free program in her quest to regain the senior women’s title at the Canadian figure skating championships. She’s gone from the intense vibes of “Danse Macabre” to the much softer stylings of “Butterfly Lovers,” a famed piece of Chinese orchestral music.
“I can’t believe we kept it under wraps so long, and it didn’t leak before this,” Schizas said about the new program she’ll debut at Place Bell.
It’s music that Schizas had in mind for her long program for the Olympic season. But when she got home from the Cup of China Grand Prix competition in late November, she decided the time was right to start building a new program — if anything, to get an early start on work for the Olympic year. But as Schizas immersed herself into the new work alongside choreographer Alison Purkiss, an idea began to form in her head.
Why do we need to wait? Why not make the switch now away from a program that, admittedly, she’d had trouble mastering consistently. The new program came together in just three days and she performed it for a Skate Ontario training session two weeks later. The judging feedback she received was so positive, Schizas knew the decision she had to make.
“We just liked the program so much, and I performed it at a training day for Skate Ontario and after that, the judge feedback was so complimentary.,” she explained. “And I had skated a really clean program about two weeks after getting the program at this training day. And from there, we decided it was the right call to just use it right away.
“I have no complaints about the (Danse Macabre) program, it’s just that the pacing was perhaps not quite the right fit for me. The programs where I’ve had the most success have been a little bit slower and paced a little bit differently … (Danse Macabre) was two minutes of really fast skating into four high-scoring elements, and I'd proceed to miss them way too often. And then, immediately we switched to a slower program and immediately the jumps were on line in the program.
“It was the biggest thing, just the pacing. Sometimes a program you really like is perhaps not the best fit for you, and I think that what happened there. (Butterfly Lovers) was perhaps just a better fit. I have no complaints about the other program. It was well choreographed, it was well chosen, it just never really meshed with me and the style of skating I’m most comfortable with.”
Purkiss, whose choreography work with Schizas goes back to when she was 11 years old, also crafted the “Lion King” short program she’ll skate on Saturday (the senior women’s event is the first of the day).
“She knows me really well. I think we got the program laid out and organized in like three days,” Schizas said of Purkiss, who also coaches Canada’s second-ranked pairs team of Lia Pereira and Trennt Michaud. “We were really quick and efficient because we had to be if I was going to perform it two weeks later. It’s just worked out really well.”
There are also plans to bring in some “specialists” to further refine the program, including a Chinese dance instructor. But that’s for another day.
The ice dance trio of Scott Moir, Madison Hubbell and Adrian Diaz were the creative forces behind “Danse Macabre.” Schizas maintains she was impressed with and grateful for their work, adding “this stuff happens in skating. People switch programs all the time.”
“It was no issues with their choreography or what they did. It was a lovely program. We saw that at Skate Canada it was a lovely program but if you can’t skate it consistently all the time, then you need to reassess. Where I was at with it was that in practice, I wasn’t skating it clean all the time as much as I would have liked to while with this one, I skated two clean programs this week out of two attempts with it. I’m skating it clean all the time. It makes me feel better and it’s clearly just a better vehicle for me and where I’m at in my skating.”
And it’s the music she will keep right through the Olympic season.
“That was the whole idea with this, that I would keep it if I used it right away, I would be keeping it for a year and half so it would have time to grow and time to build something,” she said.
All of this has Schizas in right frame of mind heading into Canadians, where she is determined to wash away the memory of the free skate nightmare of a year ago in Calgary which, in great part, cost her a third straight national title. It will be important against what figures to be a much more competitive senior women’s field this week.
Last year, Schizas was the lone Canadian woman with the necessary technical minimum score to be eligible to compete at the 2024 World Championships in Montreal. This year, with new criteria, there are five: defending champion Kaiya Ruiter, Katherine Medland Spence, Sara-Maude Dupuis and Uliana Shiryaeva are the others.
All of them are here in Laval to compete for podium spots, at the very least. You can probably throw Skate Canada Challenge winner Amy Shao Ning Yang onto the list of contenders as well.
“There’s a lot of good ladies,” agreed Schizas’ coach Nancy Lemaire. “Everybody can do everything, it’s just who’s going to do it when it matters to the quality that you need to be at.”
But Schizas knows as well as anyone how this can all play out.
“I know that if I skate my best, I can win, and if I skate my best, I’m competitive with some of the best skaters in the world, so that’s really what I’m focusing on,” she said.
Skate Canada International, where Schizas produced a pair of clean programs and her best overall score (190.04) in two seasons, gave her tangible proof of that. Lemaire believes her protege’s mind is right where it needs to be this week to chase another Canadian title.
“She’s in a really good place. She has been training really well but also I think she’s just maturing nicely into competing and feeling comfortable with the pressure,” said Lemaire. “Having a good season this year has helped. She’s had some really good skates and loves the programs.”
Three years after Schizas made her Olympic debut in Beijing — and skated some of the best programs of her life in the Team Event there — Lemaire believes she is rounding into the right form as the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics draw ever closer. It’s been a work in progress getting there.
“She was really young when she went through that whole Olympic thing (in 2022) and being thrown into things like that. Now she’s ready to be the person that people expected her to be four years ago,” said Lemaire. “It’s a lot of weight on your shoulders being the only girl going. And then the expectation of ‘you’re going to go again. You’re so great.’ And she’s like ‘OK, I got lucky in a way and had a really good skate at a really big moment, but that doesn’t …
“It’s like throwing a dart against the wall. Sometimes it’s great and other times, it’s not great. You still have to work and train to be the person to hit that dot every time.”
There’s no place like home
There’s something about the Canadian Championships that just seems to bring out the best in Kaiya Ruiter. And she’s got the receipts to prove it.
The last three times she’s skated alongside her country’s best in the biggest domestic event of the season, she’s landed on the podium each time. Twice, she’s found her way onto the top step by competition’s end.
A quick review for those who may not remember …
2020 — Canadian junior women’s champion
2023 — Canadian senior women’s silver medallist
2024 — Canadian senior women’s champion
(if you want to go back even further, she was national novice champ in 2019).
So yeah, it’s safe to say she’d had a lot of success on this stage (we should also mention she’s won the long program both years she’s competed as a senior at Canadians). Just don’t ask her to explain why in any kind of detail.
“It just feels like home in the rink. I don’t even know how to describe it. Just filled with the warmth of family and Canadian fans. I don’t know, it just feels like home out there and I’ve loved that feeling and I’m grateful for it every time I’ve had it,” she said in an interview before she headed to Laval for nationals (official practices for senior women began this morning). “That’s why I look forward to it every year, to be honest. There’s just something special about nationals that nothing else can mimic. I’m excited for that.”
She’s also excited for the opportunity to defend her Canadian title in Laval. It’s a new position for the 18-year-old, who switched her training base to Toronto and the venerable Cricket Club this season, after a number of years in Calgary (officially, she still represents the Calalta Figure Skating Club and the Alberta/Northwest Territories/Nunavut section).
“Well, I just think it’s really cool. I’ve been really excited for that,” she said of skating as a defending champion for the first time. “Just to get to go in as a champion is still crazy to me. I’m so excited for that and to get to skate at (second last) in the short program, it’s just going to be such a cool moment for me. Just to see where my hard work paid off and just to get to enjoy that. It just brings extra excitement.”
So would a second straight Canadian title, if she can make that happen.
“It would mean the world, but that’s not where I’m trying to focus right now. I’m just trying to focus on training and getting my best stuff out there, and just seeing what happens,” said Ruiter. “I try not to think about the outcome as much as I try to think about the work and the moment of competition. But yes, of course, it would definitely mean the world.”
Hey, what about me …
Sara-Maude Dupuis says she’s joked in the past about possibly winning a Canadian championship just 10 minutes from her home. So let’s just say the thought isn’t completely absent from her mind.
“Sometimes I joke about it. I would joke with my family, ‘come see me skate. I’m going to win.’ It was just a joke,” the 19-year-old Montrealer says when asked about the possibility of winning what should be a highly competitive event. “I think I could win, I’m not sure I will. I would have to skate two good programs because I think we have a really strong field, especially this year. It could be between 10 ladies this year, which is super fun for us. Of course, it’s in the back of my mind, the possibility I could win. But the goal is a medal.”
Dupuis is one of those skaters who could surely claim a home-ice advantage this weekend. For the first time since 1989, nationals are being held in the province of Quebec and it is being held in a rink that she has become intimately familiar with over the years.
“I train here sometimes and when I was younger, we had tons of training camps with Skate Canada and Patinage Quebec here. I’ve done competition simulations here and seminars. It’s a great rink,” she said of the Olympic-sized facility which is expected to be full or close to it for all the senior events.
“Nationals haven’t been in Quebec in like, forever. Quebec skaters here have never done nationals at home. Now it’s 10 minutes away from my house, so tons of friends and family who always wanted to come and see me compete — I always had to say, ‘oh, it’s in Calgary or Vancouver’ — now they can come and they are coming (about 40 of them for Sunday’s free program), which is great. The rink’s going to be full and I’m really excited to see that.”
She would like them all to see her standing on the podium by the end of the women’s competition. It’s her biggest goal this weekend, and one that has felt more possible since she won her first international medal, a bronze at Tallinn Trophy in Estonia back in the fall.
“I’m aiming for a medal. I think it would be a good result toward my qualifications for Four Continents, which is the ultimate goal this season,” said Dupuis. “And it’s a personal goal of mine. Medalling at nationals after medalling in Tallinn is a good confidence and good momentum.”