Question-able thoughts for a new season ... and maybe some answers
The start of a new skating season is drawing ever closer. Here's a few things occupying my mind about it as the summer months near their conclusion.
You may well have heard them referred to as “burning questions.” Usually accompanied by a number in front of them, with the thought behind it being “well, they just have to read it now, right?”
It’s right out of the “cheap ways to go for clicks” handbook.
(and you know how I feel about that).
Point being, right before we dig into a new season in just about any sport, there are always things that jump out at you as items that require answers. Curiosities that you absolutely want to see resolved before said season concludes. And that’s what we’re going to attempt to do here as the 2024-25 season moves into much closer view (hey, September isn’t that far away!).
You may recall we undertook that exercise a year ago (right here, if you missed it) and, without meaning to back-pat a little too much, kind of nailed a few of them and others … well, not so much. But it’s always fun to put some ideas like this on the table and see how it all plays out in the months ahead. This is also meant as a companion piece to the season primer we posted a week ago in this space in regard to Canadian skating.
Anyways, with all of that as a preamble, here are some things that are rolling around in my head as I contemplate what might unfold in the months to come (and as any good reporter will tell you, the questions never really do end, right? So we might be back to amend some of this down the road. As we’ve said before, it’s a long season, folks).
Can Canada do the Worlds double for the first time since 2012?
Allow us to take you back a dozen skating seasons ago, when the planet’s best skaters gathered in Nice, France, for the 2012 World Figure Skating Championships. Canada’s golden generation of skaters were early into their decade of glory and had a rather special week lined up in Nice. First, Patrick Chan won his second of three straight Worlds titles; later, it was Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir’s turn to snatch their second of three World ice dance crowns. That’s right, half the golds there went to Canadians.
Now, how rare is this? You have to go back nearly two decades, all the way to 1993, to find more evidence of Canadians doing the Worlds gold double (Kurt Browning, with the last of his four World titles in men, and Isabelle Brasseur and Lloyd Eisler, with their lone global crown in pairs). An aside: that event was held in Prague, where Canadians also had twin world champions back in 1962 (the great Donald Jackson in men, Maria and Otto Jelinek in pairs).
So now that we’ve established this is far from an everyday thing … let’s bring the conversation back to the upcoming season, which will conclude with the 2025 World Championships in Boston. Canada will have the defending champion in that event in pairs (Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps), and the reigning world silver medallist (Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier). So it’s easy to see why we’d revive the thought of a double World title for skaters from the Great White North.
So is it doable? Let’s just say it’s on the table for sure. At this point, Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps have to be considered favourites for gold in Boston. And the last time we saw Gilles and Poirier skate competitively, they were the best ice dance team on the ice at 2024 Worlds in Montreal (they won the free dance, but finished second overall to two-time World champions Madison Chock and Evan Bates of the United States). So yeah, a double World title for Canada in Boston is eminently possible. But just keep in mind exactly how rare that feat is before you wager your life savings on it.
Which Maddie Schizas are we going to see in the coming season?
At this time a year ago, it seemed we were about to see a new Maddie Schizas. The two-time Canadian champion had enlisted two new sets of choreographers for her programs for last season, all with the thought of moving upward from the 12th and 13th-place finishes at Worlds that had become standard procedure for her. And she knew full well then (and still does) the value of a top-10 finish at the big show.
There was certainly plenty to like in her fall season, especially at Skate Canada International in Vancouver where she had the free skate of her life, which elevated Schizas to fourth place in the final standings. She later placed fifth at her second Grand Prix of the season in China. Everything seemed in place for a run at a third straight Canadian title, and a chance to move up at 2024 Worlds in Montreal. Maybe even into the top 10.
But then Calgary happened. More specifically, a disastrous free skate that opened the door for Kaiya Ruiter to win her first Canadian senior championship. It was stunning to just about everyone who witnessed it and, of course, to Schizas herself. But she gathered herself for a much improved performance at the Four Continents Championships, then headed to Montreal for her fourth Worlds. However, two error-riddled programs at the Bell Centre saddled her with an 18th-place finish, her lowest ever at Worlds.
So now we arrive at the crossroads that is the 2024-25 season, and the question has to be fairly asked: Where does Schizas go from here? We got into that during an interview back in June, when the 21-year-old did her best to analyze what went wrong last season, and what she’s learned from it all. At her very best, Schizas is Canadian champion again next season and could challenge for that coveted top-10 berth at Worlds. But whether she can produce all of that … hey, that’s why we asked this question.
Is Aleksa Rakic ready to be a Canadian champion?
You’ll recall it was Wesley Chiu, who won his first national senior championship last season, and Roman Sadovsky who carried Canada’s colours into the home Worlds at Montreal’s Bell Centre back in March. We’ll get into all of that in a bit more detail later in this column, but we’re here to talk about the guy who quietly put together a rather solid season of his own during the 2023-24 campaign.
That would be Aleksa Rakic, the Vancouver-area skater who might have been the busiest guy in figure skating last season. In our interview about a month ago, Rakic talked about have six competitions under his belt (four of them during the summer) before he showed up to the Canadian championships in Calgary, where he emerged with the silver medal after the best free skate of the competition.
It’s the latter result that has us thinking the 19-year-old might just be ready to ascend to the top step of the podium when 2025 Canadians are held in Laval, Quebec. Rakic won that free skate by a hefty seven-point margin, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the wide edge that Chiu had built up in the short program. Still, Rakic came out of that season brimming with confidence and declared during our video chat that the Canadian title is something he believes is possible come January.
It was in this space a year ago that we asked this very question about Chiu, who had lingered around the podium for a few seasons. We know how that all turned out in Calgary. Maybe some of that magic can carry Rakic to the top of the podium in Laval. Lightning does strike twice sometimes, right?
How many Canadians will we see at the Grand Prix Final in Grenoble?
Spin the clock back about nine months or so, and you’ll be reminded that it was quite the banner year for Canadians at the Grand Prix Final. Canada had five entries in the senior events (three dance, two pairs), not to mention a trio of teams in the junior pairs competition. But for the purposes of this question, we’ll stick to the senior stuff for the moment.
So to get right to the point … can those who have an affinity for the skaters wearing the red maple leaf expect to see that kind of bonanza repeat itself, this time in the Olympic city of Grenoble, France? Scan the Grand Prix schedule for this fall, and it’s easy to see Canada could come very close to duplicating what happened a year ago in Beijing.
Let’s do the math. Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps should be favoured to win both of their Grand Prix events (in Canada and Finland), so let’s pencil them in for a spot. Gilles and Poirier are in the same boat in the same events, with only one true challenger in each. So they’re in. I’d also say fellow ice dancers Majorie Lajoie and Zachary Lajoie are staring at a pair of medals in Canada (where they’ll duel Gilles and Poirier) and China, where they’ll be heavy favourites for gold. Let’s add them to the list of qualifiers.
After that, it gets a little tricky. Lia Pereira and Trennt Michaud were the second Canadian pair team at the Final in Shanghai, and it’s not difficult to see two medals in the cards for them this fall (France and China). Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Nikolaj Soerensen were the third dance entry a year ago, but they’ve got arguably the toughest path back, having to contend with Chock and Bates at both their Grand Prix stops (U.S. and Japan) and at least one other team they finished behind at Montreal Worlds. So let’s call them a maybe for now, but certainly with potential to get there.
About the Canadian men and women … well, read on, my friends.
Will Canada have more than one men’s or women’s singles skater on the entry list for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Olympics?
Ah, you know we had to land on this one. For a lot of you, this might well be THE question of the entire season. And you may not like the answer.
Based on everything I saw at Montreal Worlds, there’s only way to view this at the outset of a new season. It’s a long shot, a real long shot, that Canada sees more than one entry in either discipline at Milan-Cortina 2026. That’s because, as we explained last week, it’s entirely dependent on what goes down at the 2025 Worlds in Boston. With only one men’s and women’s entry there, a top 10 finish will be required to bump Canada’s total up to two for the ensuing Winter Games. It’s a very tall order.
We’re a long way from knowing who gets to take on that enormous task, but the facts are these: in Montreal, Canada’s three singles entries finished 17th (Chiu), 18th (Schizas) and 19th (Sadovsky). In terms of scores, Schizas was the closest to the top 10 at a shade under 15 points; neither men’s entry was closer than 22. So yes, it’s going to require a mighty leap upward to secure that second spot, no matter who ends up being tasked with that duty.
Looking for the bright side on this? As Browning has said in the past, it’s ice and they put the slippery side up. Meaning funny things can happen sometimes. While the words “long shot” are the correct ones to use here, that’s not the same as calling it impossible. So yes, I’m still saying there’s a chance. But that being said, don’t go betting the farm on it, either.