One more chapter for Canada's ice queen
Four-time national champion Maddie Schizas says she's looking forward to skating through a campaign free of all the pressures of the Olympic season
It’s long been said that an Olympic skating season is a completely different animal. There’s tons more pressure and scrutiny pretty much every step along the way, and not just when you get to finally competing under the five rings. It can be an exhausting journey.
All of which means the coming season, the one that follows the Olympic campaign, offers up a time to take a deep breath and start writing a new chapter. One that isn’t fraught with so much in the way of consequences coming from your every move.
That’s the kind of logic that went into the thinking that brought Maddie Schizas back for another season on the competitive trail. She’s a four-time Canadian champion, she has a pair of Winter Olympics under her belt … and yet, she’s eager for at least one more go at all of this.
Asked at the World Championships in Prague about her future plans, the 23-year-old from Oakville, Ont., used the phrase “up in the air” to describe where things sat at that particular time in March. But whatever uncertainly had been in her head back then has been pushed aside and it’s again full steam ahead.
Into a season that feels so much lighter and free than the last one.
“There were numerous motivators. I went back and forth on it, but I was never not doing it,” she said in explaining the rationale behind her choice to return to competition. “I think there are various motivators; I like skating and the process of everything, and I felt like having a year with less pressure than Olympics.
“It gives you the opportunity to take more risks and do things with no regret, so I think that was a big motivator for me. Just the opportunity to maybe try some different things without feeling that any decision you make could be the make or break. There’s a little bit less pressure on every decision.”
Much like her fellow Canadians, ice dancers Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, did four years ago, Schizas is taking it season by season now. That kind of mindset freed up Gilles and Poirier to enjoy some of the best skating of their careers, leading all the way up to that magical night in Milan in which they became Olympic bronze medallists — and turned in the iconic “Vincent” free dance that, for some, was the skating moment of the entire Games.
(iconic is a word that would apply to that sublime performance).
We’ll see soon enough how well Schizas might be able to tap into that kind of mindset, even if she’ll tell you she more or less saw things that way over the previous quadrennial.
“That’s pretty typical for most people, right? Unless you’re really young, I think most people are on a year-by-year path, even people who say they’re on a four-year path. Anything can happen in my mind,” she said. “Even the last four years, to an extent, were year by year, because you just don’t know where life’s going to take you and what kinds of things can come your way. You have so little control.
“To me personally, a number of things that have happened in the world around me made me remember that I’m lucky to be able to skate and have a community around me and my family, and also that you just have very little control over your fate in a lot of ways.”
It’s also why it’s way too soon to be talking about another Olympic opportunity in France in 2030. Four years, after all, can truly feel like an eternity right about now.
“Four years is a long time away, and I have other life aspirations. I’m looking at my options for grad school and everything else,” said Schizas, who works under the direction of coaches Nancy Lemaire and Alison Purkiss at the Milton Skating Club west of Toronto. “So I’m going to see how this year plays itself out, and also how some of that life stuff plays itself out, and see where I end up a year from now.”
Schizas mentioned school and it was just a week ago that a big moment in that part of her life arrived — her commencement at McMaster University in Hamilton, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in Environment and Society. It was something that, around this time a year ago, she had said she wanted to achieve despite the demands of the Olympic season.
“It was a grind, getting through all that, but it was something that was important to me,” said Schizas, who worked hard the first three years of university to be able to keep her course load relatively light during the Olympic year. “I really think that if you don’t start, you’ll never finish, and it was important to me to stay on track with my education. That’s always been important to me and to my family.
“A lot of the skaters who came before me didn’t finish a degree while they skated or didn’t go to university at all. Having done it, I see why it was like a pain; you’re navigating the whole thing yourself, there’s not a whole lot of outside support. You’re trying to figure it all out on your own, so it was a lot of work that was important to me, and I’m happy and proud that I did that.”
But that piece of paper she earned wouldn’t come close to encapsulating what university life in Hamilton meant to Schizas. For all four years, she lived in a house in Westdale, a popular area for student living next to McMaster, with a group of roommates who provided a constant source of normalcy and support during the especially hard times that every elite athlete goes through.
Let’s just say it was an emotional day in the spring when those roomies — two of them came to watch Schizas at the Milan Olympics, and they celebrated their 23rd birthdays together there — packed up the house they shared for four years and went their separate ways.
“That was really important for me to have a bit of an outlet and a group outside of skating,” Schizas explained. “Skating at this level can be really can be quite isolating if you don’t have anything else. You have friends at the rink but … You end up in a bit of a bubble and I think a lot of people end up finding that quite isolating.
“So I think from having a healthy, balanced life perspective, that was super important, that I gave myself the space and the time to find interests and friendships and community outside of our sport. It just gives me a better, broader perspective on the world. I think it’s really easy to get all wrapped up in skating, and for it to be all consuming, and I think that’s true about anything.
“If you’re an engineer and all you do is talk to engineers, or whatever, your circle and perspective on the world is going to be pretty small. It was important for me to look beyond skating and look beyond where I grew up and everything and meet new people, see new things, get new perspectives on my life and the world.”
As for the roomies, yeah, they know quite a bit more about skating now.
“The only skating they knew about was Tessa (Virtue) and Scott (Moir). They knew about Tessa and Scott, and they were quite disappointed when they found out they were married to people that weren’t each other,” said Schizas. “They found that quite upsetting. They’re like, oh my God, really? I’m like, yeah, I’m sure.
“But now that they know the players, they know the game, right?”
It’s from here that we can draw the line directly to the thing that made Schizas go absolutely viral during the Winter Games. She put up what she thought was an innocent, intended to be funny Instagram post asking a university professor for an extension on an assignment she inadvertently missed the deadline on because, well, there was this Olympic thing she had to get to in Italy (attaching a press release confirming all of this was absolute gold on her part).
Suddenly, the entire world seemed to care about her story — it’s fair to suggest she might have been the most famous university student in Canada for about 48 hours. Her professor got interviewed by the CBC (he even created his own Instagram account and posted a single photo showing his support for her efforts in Milan). As the old saying goes, it’s a story that literally took on a whole life of its own.
Even now, Schizas finds it hard to fathom how out of control things got.
“That was ridiculous. I didn’t clock the real scope of the Olympics; my first games were in Beijing (in 2022), and you’re in that COVID bubble. I knew the Olympics were a big deal, but I hadn’t really lived it, I guess,” she said. “A couple of times I posted things that just blew up, and I was like, good lesson, right?
“I had a bit of an Instagram following before (the Games), but it wasn’t like millions of people seeing things ever, right? It was crazy and it just became quite a story. But I guess it’s a personal interest thing. It’s a bit of an entrance into our lives beyond the ice, and I think people enjoy that. But I mean, it was crazy; every news outlet in the world was reporting on it.”
(“madeline schizas university extension” is still an active Google search term, if you’d like to give it a whirl yourself).
But that wasn’t her only brush with social media … shall we call it, notoriety? After the short program in the Team Event, Schizas had what we’ll describe as a very honest reaction to a score she didn’t agree with (and hey, countless skaters have done that, right?). And one of those social media creators looking for content on the first day of the Games quickly turned it into a meme that made the rounds.
Understand that Schizas didn’t ask for or want any of this attention. But as she knows better than ever now, social media never ever takes a day off, especially on a huge stage like the Olympics.
“I wasn’t in this for social media fame, just so we’re clear. I think social media, in a lot of ways, was created by the devil himself,” she said. “You know how people say that kids want to be influencers? I had zero interest in that. It came together that that’s what happened. But my interest in that, at any point in my life before this, was absolutely zero. I’m just like, this is so embarrassing.”
But some good did come out of all of this, something that Schizas has come to enjoy doing. Partly at the urging of her McMaster roommates, she started posting “day in the life” behind-the-scenes videos from Milan. It’s carried on from there, through things like the recent Canadian Stars On Ice tour. That, she’ll tell you, is something that actually has value to her.
“I like sharing about skating, because I know I would have enjoyed that as a teenager, seeing what it’s like to be a high-level skater,” she said. “So I think it’s kind of fun to show people a little bit more about that, because I think it can be a little bit of a secretive world.
“I remember when (I was) a new senior, I was confused all the time. I was constantly lost on what was going on, because nobody really tells you things. It just kind of happens. So, I think it can be a bit of a closed world, and so I know as a younger skater, I would have enjoyed seeing a little bit of what goes on.”
There was also some skating to be done in Milan and, while she performed well in the Team Event, her last memory on the ice at the Games wasn’t one she envisioned happening. With the triple loop that had haunted her earlier in the season rearing its head again — Schizas doubled the jump in her short program, invalidating the element — she fell just short of qualifying for the free skate (by a mere 0.25 points).
Months later, her thoughts about what happened with that program haven’t really changed. It’s still baffling to her.
“Great question,” she said when asked about it. “I think that I had been there (in Milan) a long time and — another example was at Canadians — I think I got into my head a little bit about (the triple loop) going into it. It was very unfortunate.
“For whatever it’s worth, I’m doing a (triple) flip in the short this year. I’m not doing that (loop) again. I’m done.”
Mind you, as she pointed out, Schizas wasn’t alone in what she did — although she paid the highest price for it.
“You saw a bunch of doubles (in the short). Amber Glenn did it. It was like a pandemic of double jumps,” she said.
With a month to regroup, Schizas got herself back into a better headspace heading into the World Championships in Prague and got through the short program there. She would end up 15th overall, four spots lower than she placed at 2025 Worlds in Boston. Her 178.29 overall score was 12.5 points less than the previous year.
“I had a good month. I can get over one bad short program over the course of a month,” she said of something she also had to do earlier in the season. “Every short program you skate is independent of the last one, or every free skate is independent of the last one.
“It’s like rolling a dice or flipping a coin. Obviously, it’s not at all like that; your training is determining the probability that you skate well. But if you’re thinking of each individual event or each individual competition, they’re all independent of each other. Your last skate or your last event isn’t going to determine the next one.
“The whole (having the) hot hand thing, I don’t buy it, because that’s a mental thing that you get suckered into, right?”
What happened at both Olympics and Worlds kind of fit right in with how the rest of her season went, the highlight being the fourth Canadian title earned by Schizas in January in Gatineau, Que. It gave her the second highest number of national women’s crowns this century, behind only Joannie Rochette’s six.
And yes, adding number five is her top goal in the coming season, against a field that keeps growing stronger every year.
“The big thing is just wanting to have some good skates, just a little bit more consistency in my performances,” said Schizas. “That’s a big one, just more consistency, but also just more commitment to the choreography of the programs, and just choosing programs that I think can be fun and kind of reflect my fun personality a little bit.”
We’ll have to wait a bit to see what those programs are — as of our conversation this week, both are still a work in progress (and no secrets were divulged). What you won’t see is a repeat of two years ago, when “The Lion King” went from Stars On Ice show program to a short that served Schizas very well for two seasons (well, for the most part).
“No, not at this point,” she said of the two numbers she performed during this year’s cross-country SOI tour. “They were fun, but they aren’t making a reappearance.”
For those that didn’t see the tour, the two pieces of music she used were “Cosmic Love,” by Florence + The Machine, and Raye’s “Where Is My Husband?” The latter performance eventually led to a fun sequence in which she was proposed to every night, with a giant inflatable diamond ring making it “official.”
“The day before the show (in Halifax), I was like, you know what I think I should do? I think I should get myself a big inflatable ring for someone to come and propose to me with,” she said of that idea. “So I DoorDash it from Party City to the rink.
“Blew the thing up and then the rest was history.”
The tour itself was a fun way to end the season, even if a weary Schizas fell ill by the end of it — and SOI was extended when a planned Hamilton show had to be rescheduled for May 19.
“I enjoyed Stars On Ice, I liked both of the show numbers I picked this year, and it was fun,” she said. “The show was fun, I thought the numbers were really good, and the music was just enjoyable music, and I feel like that got me through it.
“It was a long tour, and the last however many shows I was quite sick. It got extended … I was supposed to go on a trip that I didn’t end up getting to go on because of that. But that’s a grown-up thing that happens; work gets in the way of your plan sometimes.”
Speaking of plans … as things now stand, Schizas won’t be hitting the competitive ice until at least September.
“At this point, it’s not looking like there will be a summer event. It’ll be something in September,” she said. “I think we’ll have a domestic (event) in September, and then a later Challenger, but I’m not totally sure.
“We’re still working out the plan on that. What it’s looking like right now is just a little bit more time to get organized before showing everybody anything.”