'It felt like it was like home'
Their move to the London area has already been a roaring success for Canadian ice dancers Marie-Jade Lauriault and Romain Le Gac
Marie-Jade Lauriault smiles easily when the thought is presented to her and ice dance partner Romain Le Gac that their new training environment — and the guy who runs it — must be a rather enjoyable world to live in.
“It’s really, really hard not to have fun,” the 28-year-old Canadian admits, adding in the same breath. “But he really pushes you to the maximum and gets the best out of you. And it’s nice to have this Golden Retriever energy by the boards.”
If you haven’t guessed by now, ‘he’ in this case is Scott Moir, the two-time Olympic gold medallist in ice dance with Tessa Virtue, who these days is the head coach and managing director of the Ice Academy of Montreal’s satellite campus near London, Ont. Moir has put together an impressive team of coaches to work alongside him, most notably the husband and wife team of Adrian Diaz and Madison Hubbell (she being the 2022 Olympic bronze medallist for the United States with Zachary Donohue).
That particular training centre in southwestern Ontario continues to produce a growing string of success stories. Canadian skating fans will know them as the coaches of Lily Hensen and Nathan Lickers, and rising junior talents Layla Veillon/Alexander Brandys and Charlie Anderson/Cayden Dawson (more on them in a bit).
In other words, there’s a lot of positive energy floating around the rink. Something that Lauriault and Le Gac surely felt back in the spring when they went to Hubbell and Diaz to create a new free dance. It felt like a reunion of sorts, being that all four of them — and Moir, for that matter — had previously been training mates at the main I.AM campus in Montreal. And it didn’t take long for Lauriault and Le Gac to notice all the great, creative things going on around them.
“We went two times during the spring to do our free dance choreography there and then a checkup,” said Le Gac. “And we realized that we really enjoyed being there and wanted to be there more than just the two weeks per time.”
So it was that, at the beginning of the July, the veteran duo — who first joined forces on the ice in Montreal in 2014, and became husband and wife in December 2015 — decided to make the full-time move to the London campus. It was a culture shock, to be sure, and so much different than what they had known for all of their time together. But they couldn’t be happier with how it has all worked out.
“It feels like it’s weird to say because I’ve always trained in Montreal since I’m like eight years old,” said Lauriault, who is from Laval, just north of Montreal island. “I’ve trained with the same people, and now it’s been 12 years we were training together in Montreal. So when we took the decision, we felt like it was the right decision.
“It felt like it was like home, the first day we went and trained with Madi, Adi and Scott, and we trained with them also. They’re like older teammates. And it feels like home, so it was the right decision for us.”
Their move was also fully supported by the I.AM coaching team in Montreal, which is headed up by Marie-France Dubreuil, Patrice Lauzon and Romain Haguenauer.
“When we told the coaches in Montreal, I think they just wanted us to be happy, they just wanted us to be able to perform at full potential,” said Lauriault. “So that’s what we felt in Montreal when we explained our decision and explained our process. It was nice to have that reaction from their side, too.”
Their connection to the main I.AM campus remains strong, however. Check out the choreography credits for both of their programs this season, and you’ll see five names associated with them (Dubreuil and Montreal-based dance coach Samuel Chouinard being the others).
“We keep the link open with Montreal. We go back when we need to, and they’re (involved) in the process of the training,” said Lauriault. “But it’s been great. It’s been two months now that we’re there full time (in Ontario) and it feels amazing to train there. We have a lot of fun. I feel like it helped us to fall in love again with training and with skating. So it was really nice and a fun process to do that.”
As for their life away from the rink … yeah, a bit of a difference there, too. Gone is the Montreal traffic and general hubbub of life in one of Canada’s biggest and most cosmopolitan cities, all of it replaced by … well, this.
“The only traffic we get is the geese crossing the street,” said Lauriault.
A bit of perspective from someone who spent a fair chunk of his life living in that part of Ontario. While London, with a population of more than 420,000, is the largest city in southwestern Ontario, it gets very rural, very fast once you venture beyond its boundaries. And the main training rink for the I.AM crew is located in Komoka, a “designated place” of just under 2,000 people just west of London (it’s a short drive down the road from Moir’s hometown of Ilderton).
But it is skating that brought them to this place and the environment there is at a level that matches what they were used to in Montreal.
“Compared to Montreal, for daily training life, it’s amazing,” said the 30-year-old Le Gac. “We are living in a house with other skaters, it’s 10 minutes away from the rink. It’s not completely different as Montreal, but they have their touch on …
“The movement, the fluidity of the dance and it shows in their skaters,” said Lauriault, picking up the thought. “The first time we went, we were looking at other skaters (and thinking) oh my God, it’s amazing what they’re doing. The choreography (to the) songs, it’s improv. Like, it’s not choreography, it’s improv. And we’re like, oh my God, if we do improv, that doesn’t look like this. So it was really amazing to see people evolve around us with this other point of view and what they bring to skating. It's really different and new for us.”
Take, for example, the process that the duo — who have become well known for the unique approaches to their programs — went through to create their new Cleopatra-themed free dance for this season. Instead of working on choreography first and then adding the storytelling later, as they had done for previous free dances to “The Corpse Bride” and “The Pink Panther,” Hubbell and Diaz had them approach things from the opposite direction.
“The choreography we did with Madi and Adi was so amazing. We didn’t want to just put a story over it, because it was so amazing and it felt so natural and unique. We really wanted to (build) the story from the choreography,” said Lauriault. “For ‘The Corpse,’ we did the opposite; for ‘Pink Panther,’ we did the opposite. We built the story and choreographed to the story.
“So for us, it was a different process to start with the choreography and then build a story throughout it. It was really nice start with a different process for that free dance, but it feels as unique and different as the other free dances we did.”
Lauriault and Le Gac were also aware that the Cleopatra story — “Astérix et Obélix: Mission Cléopâtre” is the main title — has been done many times in skating previously. With that in mind, Le Gac said “we did a lot of research” before heading to London to work with Hubbell and Diaz.
“And Scott put his spice everywhere. We really prepared a lot in Montreal, like we wanted something really fun for this kind of theme, not to get too serious,” he said. “So that’s why I think in the end, it’s more like a techno house Egyptian music.”
Added Lauriault: “We watched a lot of documentaries and to try to understand how Cleopatra was as a person and she would represent herself as the goddess (Isis), which is blue, gold, and with white wings. So we got inspired from her for the costume of the program and to try to link it with the legend that’s built through the history of Egypt, like every god and goddess … we tried to live through them and to really bring all of that history to the program.”
As for the rhythm dance … well, we got into that in this space a few weeks back (it’s detailed here if you missed it), but their current choices (Prince’s “Thunder” and “Cream”) ran right smack into the dreaded music clearance issues, which means they’ll need to conjure up a new program that fits this season’s theme of ’90s music. So there’s a bit of work still to do there.
Lauriault and Le Gac spent the first five seasons of their partnership skating for his native France (he was born in the suburbs of Paris), representing that country at the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics (they placed 17th) and three World Championships, with a top finish of 13th, also in 2018, in Milan, Italy (the same place that the 2026 Winter Olympics will be held). Since switching over to Canadian flag in the 2021-22 season, they’ve won two medals at nationals, but have yet to represent Lauriault’s birth country at either Worlds or Olympics.
This season’s changes, which followed a fourth-place finish at 2025 nationals in Lauriault’s hometown of Laval — they were passed by Alicia Fabbri and Paul Ayer for the third Canadian berth at 2025 Worlds in Boston — have all been made with the intention of removing those gaps from their resume. Their competitions so far this season have shown everything appears to be on the right track.
Start at the end of July, when Lauriault and Le Gac earned a silver medal at the Lake Placid Ice Dance International. They were golden in early August at the Quebec summer competition. But the real statement came last weekend, when the couple struck gold again at Kinoshita Group Cup, a Challenger Series event in Osaka, Japan, and produced major personal best scores across the board (76.40 for the rhythm dance, 121.50 for the free dance and 197.90 overall. The latter score would have placed them eighth at Boston Worlds).
“Everything went well, honestly,” Lauriault said per a Skate Canada news release. “We’re very proud of ourselves, the work we’ve put in during training is paying off, and we believe there’s still room for improvement, so that’s encouraging.”
Added Le Gac: “There are a lot of positives to take away from this competition. We wanted to skate like we do in training and have fun. I think we found a good balance between performance and fun.”
There was also something else at stake in Osaka. Skate Canada sent three ice dance teams to Osaka, with the top finisher earning a ticket to Skate Canada International at the end of October in Saskatoon, Sask. (Lauriault and Le Gac were already slated to compete in the opening Grand Prix of the season in France). It wasn’t much of a contest, with Lauriault and Le Gac finishing 28.52 points in front of Fabbri and Ayer (169.38), who finished fifth. Hensen and Lickers were further back in seventh (154.03).
So more great early season signs for Lauriault and Le Gac, who next head to Germany for Nebelhorn Trophy on Sept. 25-27. And even more validation for their decision to take their talents westward to the London area, and all the new methods and viewpoints they have gained from a group of people they have deepened their relationship with.
“With Scott, we had trained with him for two years; Adrian and Madi for eight, nine years,” said Le Gac. “So we had already a relationship with them, but now it’s like another approach. We feel closer to them, for training and to be able to speak with them. It’s a different relationship than we had with Marie-France, Patrice and Romain.”
Lauriault said all of this “has allowed us to grow as individuals, too, because we’re not defining the relationship. We grow and we learn through them, they learn through us. So it’s a different process, but it feels really natural and organic, the way we build this relationship.
“It was special the first time we went to Lake Placid; it was Madi and Adi by the boards and it was just so nice to have them there. We’ve seen them so many times leaving by the boards, at huge competitions, at Games, at Worlds, and now that they’re there by the boards, saying ‘good luck, guys, we’re with you’ … it really feels like they are with us. We’re alone on the ice, but it really feels like they’re with us, skating with us, so it’s nice to have that new contact with them.”
More Canadian pairs hardware
We first addressed this subject in depth two years back, when Canadian pair skaters earned a flurry of medals on both the Grand Prix and Junior Grand Prix circuits, with five teams in total making their way to the series final in Beijing.
There was more of the same a year ago, at least at the junior level, when Skate Canada sent a pair of teams to the series final in Grenoble, France. On both occasions, the duo of Jazmine Desrochers and Kieran Thrasher took home a bronze medal.
Already, it appears there will be multiple pair teams going to the Grand Prix Final set for early December in Nagoya, Japan. And that’s before the Grand Prix Series kicks off in October.
We’ve already written about the successes of Ava Kemp and Yohnatan Elizarov (here and here), who were golden in both Latvia and Turkey and have already secured a ticket to Nagoya.
And now, there’s even more. Desrochers and Thrasher made their JGP season debut this weekend in Bangkok, Thailand, and emerged from the competition with a silver medal. The duo, who are coached by Bruno Marcotte at Skate Oakville west of Toronto, also turned in a personal best overall score of 160.65, finishing 2.38 behind gold medallists Rui Guo and Yiwan Zhang of China.
(an aside: that Chinese team placed second behind Kemp and Elizarov in Ankara, with the Canadians winning handily with a PB of 179.43).
For Desrochers and Thrasher, the Junior Grand Prix next stops for them at the Solidarity Cup from Oct. 1-4 in Gdansk, Poland.
Around the boards
It was another weekend with a silver lining for Canada’s Charlie Anderson and Cayden Dawson, who placed second in the ice dance event in Bangkok with a personal best total of 150.77, which was 3.19 points shy of the top step of the podium. The two silver medals (the other one earned earlier in the series in Turkey) should have Anderson and Dawson in good position to earn a ticket to the Junior Grand Prix Final … Also in Thailand, Canada’s Anthony Paradis placed sixth in the men’s event, while Victoria Barakhtina finished eighth among the women … Ice dancers Marjorie Lajoie and Zachary Lagha have withdrawn from Nepela Memorial, a Challenger Series event set for Sept. 25-27 in Bratislava, Slovakia. We’ve been told there is no injury involved. Instead, they’ll put all of their focus on Budapest Cup in early October, which will also serve as a warmup for their appearance at Skate Canada International … Canadian entries in Bratislava are Sara-Maude Dupuis and Aleksa Rakic.