Falling into an Olympic state of mind
The Milan-Cortina Winter Games are still more than eight months away, but events this week produced some thoughts about where Canadian skaters are headed.
So close and yet (still) so far away … that might describe the 2026 Milan-Cortina Olympics for Canada’s winter sport athletes. The countdown clock to the opening ceremony hits 250 days this weekend but really, we’re still talking eight months here, which might feel like an eternity to some.
And hey, we’re just about to enter June and (allegedly) the summer months are still in front of us. If you live in Central Canada — where spring has been on the rather chilly and wet side for most of it, or so it seems — you know of what I speak when throwing in the “allegedly” part of that statement.
But there was a definite Winter Olympics vibe in the air this week, as the Canadian Olympic Committee held its Olympic Lab and Media Day in Montreal. It’s one of those things designed to get Canada’s future Olympic team members extra fired up for what’s to come, with its mixture of content creation, media interviews (like, a whole bunch of them) and the chance for the athletes involved to listen to inspirational speakers. Team building stuff, if you will.
For the figure skating crowd that normally follows this space, it involved nine members of Skate Canada’s national team (they’re pictured below, in this shot found in Piper Gilles’ Instagram story) and one might say they’re all seen as the safest bets to make the team Canada will send to Italy next February. Canada’s top two teams in ice dance (Gilles/Paul Poirier and Marjorie Lajoie/Zachara Lagha) and pairs (Deanna Stellato-Dudek/Maxime Deschamps and Lia Pereira/Trennt Michaud, along with Maddie Schizas, the heavy favourite to secure the lone Olympic ticket for Canada’s women.
Of course, the Canadian contingent in Milan will be slightly larger than this — there’s one men’s spot to claim, along with a third entry in ice dance — but who gets those berths is anything but a safe bet. All of that won’t be officially decided until after the Canadian national championships in January in Gatineau, Que. But there’s a long road to travel before then and, as top men’s contender Wesley Chiu reminded in this space a few weeks ago, body of work for the entire season is going to matter in the end.
With that in mind, a few Olympic season-like thoughts in late May …
Setting the Grand Prix table
The month of June arrives on Sunday, which means we’ll soon learn the entry lists for the six-event Grand Prix Series, which launches this fall with the Grand Prix de France, set for Oct. 17-19 in Angers. That’s a week sooner than normal, undoubtedly owing (at least in part) to the presence of the Winter Games in early February in Italy.
All of which may portend to a slightly earlier release of those entry lists. The International Skating Union dropped that information on June 10 (a Sunday) in 2024, meaning it’s reasonable to expect the news to land sometime in the next week for the coming season.
From a Canadian point of view, this country has three entries across the board in all four disciplines at Skate Canada International, its home event which this year is being held from Oct. 31-Nov. 2 at SaskTel Centre in Saskatoon, Sask. The two ice dance and pair teams listed above will earn two Grand Prix assignments apiece this fall, along with Schizas. And while the country will be well-represented in ice dance and pairs throughout the six Series events, there will be a dearth of entries in the men’s and women’s competitions outside of SCI. More to come on that in the weeks ahead.
Let’s bring back that drama
While your correspondent rarely needs any extra reason to get primed for the nationals in Canada — it’s long been his favourite event to cover — there is one not so little extra to look forward to this time. And that’s the backstage drama that adds a little spice to what is essentially an Olympic qualifier.
For a point of reference here, allow me to take you back to the 2018 Canadian championships in Vancouver, which finalized the team for the ensuing PyeongChang Games (which would became Canada’s most successful Winter Olympics ever in figure skating, producing a hardware haul that included two gold and two bronze medals).
While the mainstays of that team — Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, Patrick Chan, Kaetlyn Osmond, and Megan Duhamel and Eric Radford — had little to worry about in securing their tickets to Korea, there were other moments of high drama. Like, for example, Keegan Messing edging out Nam Nguyen by a little more than a point for the second men’s berth.
There was Larkyn Austman, in a surprise result, earning a rare third women’s Olympic ticket (a situation created by Osmond and Gabrielle Daleman both landing on the podium at 2017 Worlds in Helsinki — one of the more astonishing, ‘never thought I’d ever see it’ results I’ve witnessed in three decades-plus of covering this sport).
We saw Julianne Seguin and Charlie Bilodeau earn their one and only Olympic berth in pairs. And while it seems so long ago now, this was the year Gilles and Poirier finally made their way onto the Olympic team after heartbreak in 2014. Kirsten Moore-Towers and Michael Marinaro earned their first Winter Games ticket as a team (she had gone to Sochi four years earlier with Dylan Moscovitch).
Normally I’d never say this, but being in the mixed zone (instead of being in the arena watching it all live) and seeing all the emotions play out around this was one of the more fun scenes I’ve ever been around. It really was the place to be. Raw emotion from the likes of Nguyen and Elladj Balde who, while he didn’t make the Olympic team, had the kind of redemptive skates that sent him off into retirement with his head held high (and produced one of my favourite ‘too bad I can’t print this’ quotes of all time. And no, I’m still not going to print it).
Also won’t ever forget seeing Gilles leap into Messing’s arms for a warm embrace after both made their first Canadian Olympic teams. And learn shortly after why she was so enthused about it all and what it meant for both. They had spent their formative years together skating under the Stars and Stripes — Gilles was born in Illinois, Messing in Alaska, but both had family connections that eventually paved the way for them to skate for Canada.
“We went to our first Junior Grand Prix together. We’ve been travelling together forever,” Gilles said at the time. “We’re both rookies at this. We’ve got so many other Canadians here who have been through this, and we’re just going to feed off their energy. But man, it feels good.
“I’ve had a lot of really funny moments with Keegan, and now we’re just making more memories.”
We missed all of this back in 2022, when Canadian nationals in Ottawa were held behind closed doors because of pandemic restrictions. But here’s hoping we get to see a renewal of some of that drama when we arrive in Gatineau in January (ironically, it’s right across the river from our nation’s capital).
Can Canada get back on the podium in Milan?
When Canadian skaters were shut out of the medals in Beijing four years ago, it marked the first time that had happened in 42 years, since the 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid (a streak that would have been kept alive if Canada had rightly been awarded the bronze medal in the Team Event, but that’s a debate for another day. If you know, you know …).
Don’t think we’re going out on too much of a limb here in suggesting that Gilles and Poirier can be the ones to get Canada back onto the medal podium in Milan. They’ve been silver medallists for two straight years at Worlds, clearly marking themselves, at the very least, as the second-best team on the planet (behind three-time World champs Madison Chock and Evan Bates of the United States).
While it’s a wildly competitive event, Gilles and Poirier are well positioned to become Canada’s third-ever Olympic medallists in ice dance (Virtue and Moir, in 2010, 2014 and 2018, and Tracy Wilson and Rob McCall, in 1988, being the others). It’s been their dream and biggest goal for years.
On an exhilarating night in Montreal in March 2024, Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps surely looked like prime threats to chase Olympic gold in Italy. While the duo took a step back earlier this year in Boston, where they placed fifth, this guy isn’t going to be the one to rule them out of medal contention next year. But yeah, it’s going to be a tough road to get there.
The ageless Stellato-Dudek, now 41, offered up this thought on social media:
“From Champion to Challenger again — but that’s where hunger is reborn. The crown isn’t lost. It’s just waiting to be earned again.”
And that’s pretty much it for Canadian medal hopes in Milan. Y’all know the rest of that story (which has been repeated ad nauseum in this space).
The straight goods
Ask me (or any journalist) what makes the best interviews, and the answer is likely to be universally the same: honesty. Tell us how you really feel, without lapsing into endless cliches and such (or “skater speak,” as I call it here), and the story has a real chance of turning into gold. For not only the person writing it, but the folks who will end up reading it in the end.
So yeah, ask me to make a list (as much as I dread them) of my favourite people to chat with over the years, and it’s a safe bet that pretty much all of them are top of the line in giving you the straight goods, be it good or bad. Perhaps the ultimate example of that, at least for me, came way back in 2010, when this guy had to interview Joannie Rochette (and yes, she’s definitely on that list, if you insist on me making one) about a month after her mother passed away just before the Vancouver Olympics, and she found the strength to skate to a most memorable bronze medal.
Yes, we did get into that horrible stuff and yes, it was one of the hardest interviews I’ve ever had to do. But fortunately, we had built a great relationship over the years (calling her a friend would be fairly accurate) and I was amazed at her candour (and well, bravery) about it all. In short, she made it easier. Ask me which story I’m the most proud of producing in all my years writing for International Figure Skating Magazine, and that’s the one I’ve always pointed to … every single time.
All of this came to mind earlier this week when stumbling upon this Instagram post by 2018 World champion Kaetlyn Osmond, which is just filled with raw honesty about where she sits in her life right now (we got into some of this when we chatted back in March about her impending induction into Skate Canada’s Hall of Fame). Though she professes to be a naturally shy person, her interviews rank among some of the most insightful ever done by this correspondent (I’d read a few of the older ones as part of my research for our most recent chat and remember thinking to myself, “damn, she’s so good at this”). So yeah, she’s a personal favourite of mine, too.
Point being, as the old saying goes, honesty is the best policy. The stories you have most enjoyed on this site over the past two years (yes, it’s been almost exactly that long, believe it or not) came about because someone was just telling it like it is, as a certain crotchety old TV broadcaster used to say. In the end, they’re the easiest stories to write. An analogy I like to use is this — give a homebuilder some great bricks to work with, and he (or she) will build you the best house you can ever imagine.
Here’s to more of that great home, er, story building in the years to come.
The Olympic Lab and Media Day was not in Toronto… It was in Montreal.
Thanks for your thoughts and for the link to Kaetlyn's very moving video.