#SCI24: A high five for Canadian ice dancers
Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier matched a record with their latest triumph at Skate Canada. It's further evidence of this country's continued excellence in this discipline.
HALIFAX — Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier have long been aware of the gilded legacy of ice dance in Canada, an era of greatness that — in the 21st century, at least — stretches back more than two decades.
So when the now Skate Canada International champions for a fifth straight time heard their names associated with the great Shae-Lynn Bourne and Victor Kraatz, who in 2003 became the first-ever World champions from Canada, it was reason for them to sit up and take notice.
“We’re just honoured to share something so special with some incredible legends like them. They were a great example of what ice dance could be in Canada and I think they started this incredible legacy of the teams that came after them,” Gilles said after she and Poirier had locked up their fifth title in six years (there was no event in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic). “It feels nice to be a part of that, and now younger skaters like Marjorie (Lajoie) and Zach (Lagha, the silver medallists behind them at Scotiabank Centre) … they were babies when Paul and I first started skating together.
“It’s just an example of how strong Canadian ice dancers are and I think we’re so honoured to be a part of that legend and hopefully, they will continue it after we’re gone. It’s just nice to be a part of that incredible legacy.”
Indeed, this event in Halifax showcased two of the world’s top five teams, based on the 2024 World Championships in Montreal — Gilles and Poirier were the silver medallists at the Bell Centre, with their younger teammates in fifth. Given Lajoie and Lagha’s plans to carry on through the 2030 Olympics, it pretty much assures Canada will continue to contend for World podiums (and titles) in ice dance for another five seasons beyond this one.
While Gilles and Poirier matched the record with their fifth straight SCI crown, they’re still one back of Bourne and Kraatz’s six total titles. They won five in a row between 1994 and 1998, then added another in 2001. It was one season later that the duo scored their breakthrough world crown in Washington, D.C. Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir have since joined them as World champions (2010, 2012 and 2017), and those legends also added five Olympic medals, including ice dance gold in 2010 and 2018.
In total, Canadian teams have won 16 World medals in this century. As we’ve noted previously, it’s been the country’s must successful discipline at that event over that period of time. There isn’t a close second.
But beyond all that history and legacy talk, Gilles and Poirier were eager to give their new free dance — skated to Annie Lennox’s version of “A Whiter Shade of Pale” — a first test drive in Halifax. Back at Skate Canada’s high-performance camp in late August, Gilles had described it as “as a skater’s skater kind of program,” something that would appeal to “old style” fans. Having viewed it for the first time Sunday, I’d say it delivers on that count.
“We were just so pleased with how we felt out on the ice. We felt so in command of what we were doing,” said Poirier. “We were taking everything step by step through all the practices and all the performances. More than anything, it’s that feeling we want to take with us as we go into our next events. We just want to continue skating with confidence and solidity. That’s what going to bring us our best skates.”
And while that piece of history involving this event a nice to hear, these two are back in this sport for two more seasons with bigger goals in mind. There are World titles to win, Olympic medals to chase. And this Grand Prix, and the one to follow later in November (Finlandia Trophy in Helsinki), are building blocks to those targets. Gilles and Poirier are also pleased there is some breathing space between the two events.
“Last year, as we went through the Grand Prix year, I think we overtrained a little bit. Our events were quite close together and we wanted to make some improvements and work really hard between events,” he explained. “We ended up getting to our second Grand Prix and we were exhausted and feeling overtrained. I think that was a great learning experience that we’re going to remember as we get ready for our second Grand Prix this year.”
Gilles and Poirier took the gold by a comfortable 14.94-point margin, with Lajoie and Lagha 5.65 points in front of France’s Evgeniia Lopareva and Geoffrey Brissaud. It’s the first 1-2 finish by Canadian ice dancers here since 2017, when Virtue and Moir won gold and Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje took the silver.
One day after an untimely fall by Lagha after a non-scoring element, he and Lajoie did not put a foot wrong in their free dance skated to the haunting melody of Disturbed’s version of “The Sound of Silence.” It was clearly a departure from their fun and frolicky Austin Powers rhythm dance, but Lagha said this is the one, with a much more dramatic bent, that more closely mirrors their personalities. The “slow stuff,” as he put it.
“The other one is like a little bit artificial. All the rest, when we do the cha-cha slide or you dress like Austin Powers, it’s not us,” he said. “We have to smile and everything, but this is closer to who we are.”
Mind you, he admitted he wasn’t sold on this particular music right away, but Lajoie and choreographer Romain Haguenauer won him over.
“Now I like it,” Lagha said. “Romain said if you take it, it’s going to be good. We have to trust him. He has so much experience, he knows what he’s talking about.”
Lajoie felt a connection with the song and its theme right from the start.
“It really talks to me. It was good timing for me to skate to this music this season. I really, really like it,” she said. “I like the storyline in between. The Sound of Silence can mean a lot of stuff, and I think it can touch every person. It really touches me as well.”
It’s something they hope audiences wherever they skate — Cup of China is up next for them at the end of November — will take away from the program, which was skated competitively for the first time today.
“What we hope is when we finish a program, everyone — even if they don’t like it — can be like, I felt something,” said Lagha. “I was touched by this program somehow. This is the most important thing.”
Canada’s third team in Halifax, Alicia Fabbri and Paul Ayer, moved up one spot to eighth and turning what they called their best performance of their free dance this season. They’ve been busy with it already.
“We’re very happy. I think we both personally feel it was our strongest performance to date with the last three (competitions),” he said. “Whether the scores reflect that or not, it’s not necessarily in our control. What we put out on the ice is what we’re happy with.”
It was a somewhat painful weekend for Fabbri, who twisted an ankle last weekend at Skate America and had to grit out Sunday’s performance. She’s grateful for a break after three competitions in four weeks.
“Not fun,” Fabbri said of her day. “We didn’t have a lot of training. I was glad there were practices of 30 minutes; I could handle it. This morning, the practice was not fun at all. I was in tears afterward … but I thought, it’s going to be four minutes. We’ll just deal with it.
“I’m still on adrenalin, but it’s starting to hurt. But I’ll be fine. It’s not a big injury, it’s just we didn’t have time to heal it.”
Rakic makes a big leap
Aleksa Rakic held his index finger and thumb just a smidge apart as he sat in the kiss and cry area following his free skate Sunday at Scotiabank Centre. As in, so close to being a spot higher in the final men’s standings at SCI.
As it turned out, a mere 0.41 points separated fifth and seventh overall, with Rakic being on the bottom end of that.
“Seeing when it’s that close … oh, if I maybe did a couple of extra arm movements, it could have made the difference,” said the 20-year-old from Burnaby, British Columbia. “After the short, everyone (in the middle) was close in points, let’s see how well I can do, maybe even move up a spot.”
As it was, Rakic elevated his standing by five spots over his Skate Canada debut a year ago, when he was late substitute for an injured Roman Sadovsky (who, ironically enough, was forced to pull out Saturday with a back injury that hampered his jumping ability in morning practice).
While Rakic had some trouble on the landings of two triple jumps later in his program, it was a solid effort for the most part that included a quad toe and pair of triple Axels. And he can see room for even more growth.
“For a competition, one of my highest scores (145.35) for this program,” said the reigning Canadian silver medallist. “There’s proof in my improvement. Getting this score last year or two years ago, I would have had to be absolutely perfect. Here, I’ve had mistakes and missed elements … that means I could get even more points.”
His program component scores were also very much on par with the technical — something he credits choreographer Benoit Richard with helping improve. “I’ve put a lot of work into it (improved PCS) … Benoit Richaud, he helped a lot,” he said of the creative Frenchman, a former ice dancer. “I think he’s just brilliant. His mind, the way he works, is amazing. He can also move really well, probably better than me. He’s also demanding in a good way, so he really pushes me to the max of my ability.”
En route to his silver medal at nationals in Calgary back in January, Rakic won the free skate by a convincing margin (Wesley Chiu had built a double-digit lead after the short and it held up). The days of a Patrick Chan dominating men’s skating in Canada for an extended period are long gone, and the duel for gold at 2025 Canadians in Laval, Quebec, should be a doozy.
“Very much an opportunity. I feel like in the past seasons … Patrick Chan was dominating for a long time, so maybe for others, it felt like it was impossible,” he said. “But for me, it’s like I can do this. Sometimes when there’s bad days or stuff, the pressure, it can get to you. You know what can happen, and you really want it so bad, but today was important in setting me up a little closer to being the top man. Who knows?”
For Stephen Gogolev, it was a day in which he couldn’t quite replicate the relatively clean skate he produced in Friday’s short program. The 19-year-old Toronto night endured falls on a triple Lutz and a triple loop-triple Axel sequence, and also was dinged for a time violation.
He slipped to ninth in the final standings.
“Not as good as I would have hoped for, but I think it was a valuable experience,” he said afterward. “The (quad) Sal and Lutz didn’t go exactly as I planned them to go. I tried to regroup and reset for the next elements, but there were some costly mistakes at the end.
“I’m going to have to watch the program and see for myself. I think it was lack of concentration and letting it go into my head for the biggest mistakes.”
But still, this was a step forward for the talented Canadian, who has some positives to build on for his second Grand Prix test, NHK Trophy in Japan.
“I have some good things to take from this competition,” he said. “The short program was one of the best short programs I’ve delivered in the past few seasons. The free program needs some work before we get to NHK Trophy.
“Just fixing the little mistakes in the program, which shouldn’t be happening considering my content in the free program. But we’ll work on it going forward.”
World champion Ilia Malinin of the United States left no doubt at the top of the standings with a dominant free skate that allowed him to take the gold by more than 40 minutes. Already, he’s qualified for the Grand Prix Final in December in Grenoble, France (he also won last week at Skate America).
Some guys have all the (bad) luck
You no doubt remember, especially if you read this space, the woes that Roman Sadovsky was going through at this time last year. As we noted above, he had to pull out of Skate Canada a year ago due to an ankle injury. Then some, shall we say, unusual travel issues caused him to miss two Challenger Series events.
All of that seemed to be behind the 25-year-old this season — or so we thought. He already had a couple of Challenger Series events, in Boston and Germany, under his belt. He (and his skates) both showed up in Halifax for this event. But something seemed off about Sadovsky in Friday’s short program. Today, we learned why, after a WD showed up beside his name on the start list for Sunday’s free skate.
“He tweaked his back on Monday before getting here,” Skate Canada high performance director Mike Slipchuk revealed Sunday after the competition was done. “It’s nothing major long term, but he wasn’t able to rotate. That’s why you saw the first three days, he didn’t jump here on practice. He did no jumps. He got treatment while he was here. The day of the short was the first day he jumped. It wasn’t 100 per cent but there was some discomfort.”
After practice Sunday morning didn’t go well, Sadovsky and his coach Tracey Wainman made the difficult call to withdraw.
“They made the decision, Tracey (Wainman) and Roman, in his best interest. He was disappointed because he’s had a good season. He was trained and ready,” said Slipchuk.
“This morning, he came out and did stuff, but it’s just not where he wants to be. It’s not anything we see long term — we saw improvement this week — but it’s better to get him healthy, because we have him slated to go to Tallinn (Trophy, a Challenger Series event) in two weeks, so we’d like him to be healthy to get out and get that experience there.”