'It still holds that magic somehow'
The Canadian figure skating championships are special to everyone who takes part, and for a variety of reasons. For one athlete in particular, being there again is something to truly celebrate.
There’s not a figure skater in Canada that won’t tell you, probably with an excited look on their face or tone in their voice, just how big a deal the national championships in this country are to them. It is the source of so many dreams from coast to coast, dreams that do come true for the best of them around the second week of January each and every year.
And so it is again, a few days after the calendar officially flipped into 2024, that we can say it with enthusiasm: Canadians Week is almost here. We are indeed just a few days away from skate bags being dragged off to airports from Montreal to Vancouver (and beyond), the destination for one and all this time being Calgary, the Alberta city that is home to the Canadian Championships for the first time in more than two decades (though we’ll be in a much different venue this time than the old Saddledome).
Everyone there will each have their own goals, their own ideas of what will make the week particularly special for them. For the first timers, it’s just being there. For others, it might be climbing onto a podium for the first time or having that special performance in front of the biggest audience they might see all year. And then you have the top contenders in the senior events, for whom an even bigger prize is in their sights — a chance to represent their country at a home World Championships in Montreal, which is a dream of an even greater kind.
Then there is someone like Piper Gilles, who can have a little bit of all of this as her motivation. This is a Canadian ice dancer — one of the world’s best — who missed nationals last year for perhaps the scariest of reasons. Just weeks before the Canadian skating world convened in Oshawa, Ontario — just east of Gilles’ home city of Toronto — she underwent surgery to remove her left ovary after being diagnosed with Stage 1 ovarian cancer. At the time, it was announced that she and partner Paul Poirier had withdrawn due an appendectomy (which was also removed as a precaution), but the full truth came out in May during an emotional video she posted on Instagram.
So while the idea that Gilles and Poirier are back at nationals and hungry for a third Canadian title is there, you can surely understand why this — and every competition they’ve been to all season, for that matter — carries just a bit of extra meaning and appreciation for her in particular.
“I’m feeling great. I’m feeling so much better than last year,” Gilles said with a happy tone (which, if you know Gilles, is her normal state of being on most days) during a media conference call on Thursday. “I think you know it’s been a journey to finally feel like I’m back where I’m supposed to be. But I’m just really enjoying this season of feeling so much better than I did last year. And you know, enjoying every performance. So yeah, I’m feeling good.
“Everything has kind of returned to quote-unquote ‘normal’ … I’m like every other patient after any cancer scare. I just have to go back and do my normal test every three months so everything is looking good. I just had my appointment last week, so I’m healthy. I’m good and until someone tells me otherwise, I’m still going to do what I love to do.”
It’s actually been awhile since either of them has had the chance to skate at a ‘normal’ nationals. The COVID-19 pandemic cancelled the event in 2021, and Canadians in 2022 were held in an empty building in Ottawa for the same reason. So it’s been a good four years since Gilles and Poirier have performed for the “normal” audience at nationals. You bet they’re pumped up for that opportunity.
“It’s really been a while to kind of have a normal nationals and it really is such a special event,” said Poirier. “Every year you spend the majority of your career coming up the ranks, with nationals being the pinnacle of what you do every year. Even now that you know we’ll have more left to the season afterwards, it still holds that magic somehow.”
The duo arrives in Calgary on the heels of another highly successful Grand Prix season, in which they won gold medals in Canada and China before earning a bronze medal at the Grand Prix Final. It has them feeling like they’re in just the right place to chase a Canadian championship next week.
“Yeah, I think this season’s been really successful for us coming out and winning both our Grand Prix and winning another medal at the Grand Prix Final. So I think in terms of results, we’re right where we want to be,” said Poirier. “With the last two seasons, we’ve had a little bit of a later start to choreography and a little bit of a later start to the season, but we felt really prepared for the Grand Prixs and I think competing also showed us the ways that we wanted to continue to let the the programs evolve and grow over the course of the season as we head closer to Worlds. So I think we’ve just been so excited to be able to train consistently and normally over the past few weeks, unlike last year, and we’re really excited to be heading into the championship half of the season.”
Three for the show
As she casts her eyes toward a third straight Canadian women’s title — one she’s heavily favoured to win — Madeline Schizas can take comfort in knowing just what it takes to defend her crown.
The memory of a year ago in Oshawa, when she had to battle to hold off Kaiya Ruiter to retain her Canadian title, isn’t far from mind. Especially when an inquiring scribe (that would be me) reminds her about it, and how she said back then that defending a title was much tougher than winning the first one.
“I think the third time will be easier than the second,” she said Thursday. “I definitely felt a lot of pressure last year going into Canadians. I had a subpar fall season and I knew I was really going to have to step it up for nationals, so I felt a fair bit of stress going in. This year, I feel much calmer, and I think what I took from that experience is that I pulled it off. I pulled off what I was trying to do, and did it while feeling very stressed. So I’ve decided to cut out the stress part and jump to pulling off the win.”
There’s a much bigger prize at the end of the rainbow, so to speak, if she does it again (not to mention being the first to win three straight Canadian women’s title since Joannie Rochette did it six times in a row from 2005-10. As we’ve mentioned, the World Championships are back in Canada this year and Montreal is where Schizas dearly wants to finish her season.
“I’m very excited (about that), because this will probably be my only chance to skate at a Worlds in Canada. I’m realistically halfway through my senior career, and I don’t know how many seasons past (2026) Olympics I’m going to want to do,” she said. “So this may be my only chance at it, and I’m very excited. My parents are from Montreal, so I’ll have a lot of family and friends there, and I’m very excited to be able to skate in front of them.”
Schizas also figures it would a great time to climb into the top 10 for the first time at the World Championships, something she’s flirted with doing the past three seasons. And she feels she’s made the kind of changes to her training and her programs this season to get it done.
“The goal at Worlds the past three years has been to be top 10, and that’s what I’m hoping to do this year,” she explained. “I feel like I have a very good chance at it, to be top 10 or better. I just need to really buckle down and put in the work, so I can put out good performances. So that’s my big goal.”
Pairs medallists out of mix
The seniors pairs field in Calgary will be without one of its top medal contenders. Brooke McIntosh and Benjamin Mimar, who took the silver a year ago in Oshawa, were forced to withdraw due to a lingering foot injury that has kept McIntosh off the ice for the past weeks. McIntosh and Mimar were sixth at Skate Canada and seventh in Finland in their two Grand Prix assignments in the fall.
And so it begins …
After a practice day on Monday, the Canadian Championships kick into high gear on Tuesday at WinSport Arena, located in the Markin MacPhail Centre on the west side of Calgary. Junior events run from Tuesday through Thursday, with the seniors taking over the ice next Friday and Saturday. Here’s the full competition schedule (all times are in Mountain time). All of this will be streamed live on Skate Canada’s website.
Here’s the streaming schedule as posted on CBC’s website:
