'I want to move up and I want to be better'
In a summer of discovery, Madeline Schizas made the kind of choreography changes that she believes will translate into a big leap at the World Championships.
Madeline Schizas could feel the rut growing beneath her blades — and we’re not just talking about ice conditions here. The two-time Canadian champion felt like she was spinning her wheels in terms of progressing as a skater, at least based on certain results, and she knew it meant one thing.
It was time for a change. A significant change in direction.
So it was that the 20-year-old skater and her coaching team at the Milton Skating Club (just west of Toronto) decided to bring a new group of choreographers into the fold. All of them ice dancers, located a decent drive away from their training base. But she believes every kilometre she spent on the highway through the spring and summer has been worth it.
“For the short, I worked with Scott Moir and Maddie Hubbell and Adrian Diaz in London. For the free, I worked with Carol Lane and Juris Razgulajevs down in Scarboro,” explained Schizas, who hails from Oakville, Ontario. “So it’s been a lot of driving, but it’s been really good. I’m happy that I made this change. I’ve really prioritized that side of my skating as opposed to just the technical stuff. I’ve enjoyed it a lot and I feel like you can see the difference in my skating now.
“I can’t say enough for both sets of choreographers. They’ve done such a good job this year. The ice dancers, they look at every single piece of the program to make it a cohesive unit. Not that singles choreographers don’t do that, but when you go with dance choreographers, they’re tough with you to get it right and I appreciate that.”
Schizas is rather tough on herself when asked to evaluate the past season, which included a second Canadian title, a bronze medal at Golden Spin of Zagreb, a short program win at Skate Canada International, a top-five finish in her second Grand Prix event in Finland and, eventually, a 13th-place finish at the 2023 World Championships in Japan. It’s that Worlds result, which has pretty much stayed the same for three straight years, that made Schizas think especially hard about what she really wanted from the sport.
“Last year went kind of … not great. It was kind of rough from start to finish. There were definitely some good moments but on the whole, it did not go the way I wanted it to,” she said. “I came off Worlds and did Stars On Ice, and I would think ‘if I want to keep doing this, I’ve got to be better.’ I’ve gotten really good at coming 12th or 13th at Worlds — in fact, I’ve done it three times. But I thought ‘if I’m going to keep doing this, I’m going to do it right. How can I reflect and figure out how to do that?’
“As I said, I’m really good at being 12th and 13th at Worlds. I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to move up and I want to be better. Some of that is technical, but I also knew that part of being a mature skater and part of being a real senior skater as opposed to fitting in with that 16 and 17-year-old group is working on my program components and working on my skating skills and choosing programs that are mature and kind of reflect who I am as a person right now. So that was definitely a big piece of my off-season.”
It’s a thought process that began fermenting in her mind at the Beijing Olympics, where she finished 19th in her Winter Games debut under unique circumstances largely created by the shadow of COVID-19. While Schizas’ work in the Team Event went a long way toward bringing Canada a fourth-place finish, she took home far less satisfaction from her individual event.
“I knew then that I wanted to be better,” she said. “It wasn’t an overly successful Games in the individual event. I want to be better than 19th.”
With that thought in mind — and knowing there’s a World Championships in Canada at the end of this season — Schizas headed down to London, Ontario (Komoka, to be exact) to work with Moir, Hubbell and Diaz on a short program set to “Farrucas,” a Spanish composition — some of which already existed in one of her music playlists. The choreographers filled in the rest.
“I had the second piece of ‘Farrucas’ in a playlist. It’s very popular in dance — I think all three of my choreographers had used that music before — but none of them had choreographed it, I think, so this was the first time doing that,” she explained. “I suggested that piece and they thought it was cool, but they said we needed something at the beginning, so they picked the first piece.
“There’s a vocal (section) first that my choreographers picked. It’s a very mature piece of music, like very thoughtful. The whole program from start to finish was very well thought out and very thoughtful. It was really designed in a way to highlight my strengths, I would say. It’s very crisp, the choreography. It’s a very good program.”
For the free program, Schizas will skate to “Summertime,” a jazz standard by George Gershwin that she selected in conjunction with Lane and Razgulajevs. “I had two ideas. I liked the idea of doing a jazz standard and I thought about doing classical music, and they wanted to do the jazz, so that’s how we came up with that,” said Schizas. “I really like the program and again, it’s really well choreographed and well thought out and well organized to get the tech elements in while still having choreography.”
Speaking of the technical side … Schizas is simply searching for more consistency in that area, and considers that more vital than adding some new and more difficult elements to her jump arsenal.
“My biggest thing is consistency because when I skate the program the way I can skate, then I score very well. I won the short program at Skate Canada. My tech stuff is there when I get it done,” she said. “That’s my biggest goal, the consistency. We played around with adding a second Lutz or a second flip but right now, we’re not going to. However, I really feel like my tech stuff is there; I just need to do it all the time. It’s not an issue of adding, it’s not an issue of changing, it’s just an issue of doing. So that’s been the biggest goal, just getting some of the consistency a little bit more there.”
Schizas gets her first chance to present her new material in front of international judges next week, when she competes at Ondrej Nepela Memorial, a Challenger Series event which runs from Sept. 28-30 in Bratislava, Slovakia. Then it’s on to her two Grand Prix assignments, Skate Canada International and Cup of China (she’s the only Canadian woman with a pair of GP dates this season).
Come January, a shot at a third straight Canadian title awaits her in Calgary — and it figures to be quite the battle. Earlier this year, Schizas held off the charge of Kaiya Ruiter (who won the free skate) and Fiona Bombardier to repeat as national champion in Oshawa, Ontario. Ruiter skated to a silver medal last week at Autumn Classic International and right behind her in the bronze position was Justine Miclette, the 2022 Canadian junior champion who placed sixth in her senior debut in Oshawa (Bombardier is slated to make her season debut next month at Finlandia Trophy).
In other words, it might take a little bit extra to ensure a third title. The kind of ‘extra’ that Schizas believes she found in new places over the summer.
“I knew I wanted a change after last season, some kind of change … I just wanted to work with new people,” she said. “I felt like I had worked with the same people for a couple of years. So we came up with the idea to work with dance choreographers because I could also double up to work on some skating skills, which was also something I knew I needed to work on. So it seemed like kind of a natural fit.”
Soon enough, we’ll see just how well that fit translates to results on the ice.
Message received, Stephen Gogolev.
While he might like a do-over of his long program at Autumn Classic International, not so for the short, which was the best of his career. Skating to the haunting tunes of Disturbed’s version of “Sounds of Silence” (a fabulous music choice, by the way), Gogolev ripped off a quad toe-triple toe combo, quad Salchow and triple Axel. His 86.25 score was a large personal best. Though the free skate didn’t measure up to that effort, it all added up to a bronze medal — his first senior international medal.
We’ve mentioned previously that Gogolev is among the prime contenders to succeed Keegan Messing as the Canadian men’s champion. ACI was a rather decent step in that direction. Next up: Skate America in Allen, Texas.
All in all, it was a highly successful weekend in Pierrefonds for Canadian skaters, who took home five medals. We’ve mentioned the podium finishes by Gogolev, Ruiter and Miclette. But the biggest news came in the pairs event, where Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps impressively skated to the gold medal. Not only that, the duo cracked the 200-point barrier for the first time (one of their big season goals) and finished 15.57 points in front of reigning World champions Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara of Japan. If that isn’t an early season confidence builder, I don’t know what is.
(another Canadian pair, Emmanuelle Proft and Nicolas Nadeau, earned the bronze medal in their senior international debut).
Ten Canadian skaters are at Nebelhorn Trophy this weekend (most notably, it’s the season opener for Lia Pereira and Trennt Michaud). Another half dozen head to Bratislava next week for Nepela Memorial (among them, ice dancers Nadiia Bashynska and Peter Beaumont, the 2023 Canadian junior champions, who are making their senior debut).
You’ll find all the Canadian details right here.