#SCI24: Some thoughts on the road to Halifax
Skate Canada International is almost upon us, and the host country's top entries at the annual Grand Prix event had a few things to share before heading east to Nova Scotia.
Only seven more sleeps to go, folks. A week from today, the Grand Prix Series makes its annual stop at Skate Canada International, this year being held at that lovely little spot known as Scotiabank Centre in Halifax.
The Nova Scotia capital will always hold a special place in this guy’s heart — it’s actually when I first experimented with the concept of an “alternative” way of reporting on a figure skating event (you can take a trip down memory lane right here if you like) — and for my money, it’s one of my favourite Canadian cities with some of the most friendly, welcoming people you’d ever want to meet (apparently, this is known as “Maritime hospitality”).
So yeah, it’s gonna be a fun time to be “from away.” But first things first …
Canada’s top two entries in the competition took some time out of their busy days this week for some conference calls with a few of us media types. We present a few of the highlights we gathered here:
The winners and still champions
The absolutely ageless Deanna Stellato-Dudek had an interesting analogy when asked about the idea of entering a new season as defending world champions. It’s new territory for her and partner Maxime Deschamps.
“(The concept of) ‘defending your title,’ I think, really originated from the media with boxing, because you had to win your belt and then you had to defend your belt; otherwise you had to hand it to somebody else,” said the 41-year-old who calls Montreal home. “But skating's not like that. You know, we get to keep these medals forever, so we're just starting a new year, starting fresh and trying to be better than we were the season before.”
Deschamps added that they’ve had that idea reinforced to them in some sessions with sports psychologists. “One thing that has come up a lot is we are (2024) world champions. This is our title always, and this year we have nothing to defend because it’s ours. So we’re just going as next season try to just be better than what we were last year and it will bring what it will bring.”
It’s a point well taken — nobody but them will ever be “2024 world pairs champions” — and it’s remindful of a conversation I once had with a now retired skater who I’d referred to in conversation as a former World champion (“I’ll always have that title,” she said. Correctly, I might add). And this mindset kind of dovetails nicely into the way Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps approach their daily training. To hear them tell it, the goal is always “trying to beat ourselves.” Deschamps, a 32-year-old from Montreal, said it’s a concept that has “multiple layers,” and he further explained it this way:
“In the first place, you’re alone on the ice. It’s only both of us so so we cannot focus on the others. So that's where it’s mainly comes from, to focus really on your own self …Of course, we watch the others from time to time to have a reference (on what they need) to stay on top, but at the end of the day, we really want to focus on ourselves and just try to improve a little bit every time. So it’s one step at a time to be able to reach the top.”
Of course, the end game for these two is the 2026 Milan-Cortina Olympics, and everything they do between now and then is predicated on being in top form for those Winter Games. And most importantly, being as ready as can be.
“The year of the Olympics, it's going to be the one who prepares the most that’s going to come out on top,” said Stellato-Dudek. “And I mean that preparedness in every way, including in programs.”
And they’ve already been working hard on upping the technical ante. The throw-triple Lutz is one new trick they’re determined to add this season, and it’s something they started working on throughout the Stars On Ice tour back in the spring. There is a triple-double-double jump sequence that they’d like to have in place for the Olympic season (Stellato-Dudek said they did a “dry run” of that element at Skate Canada’s high-performance camp at the end of the summer, “and we had it go successfully or mostly successfully”).
The duo opened their fall season last month at Nebelhorn Trophy, placing second behind reigning world bronze medallists Minerva Fabienne Hase and Nikita Volodin of Germany. They considered it a solid jumping off point into the Grand Prix season, which for Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps also includes Finland in November.
“We never expect perfection at the first event, so we were still pretty happy with it. But we’ve made a lot of choreographic changes to the short and just kind of honed in on some of the elements that we had a harder time with in the free,” she said. “And so we put in a lot of time, like a lot of time, on all of this. So we’re hoping to see the fruits of our labour next week.”
There’s no turning back now
Paul Poirier kind of alluded to it back in the summer, when your humble scribe brought up the idea of he and Piper Gilles taking their careers all the way to a third Winter Olympics in Italy. At that particular time, they wanted to keep their thoughts on this season only, a ‘one season at a time’ mindset that’s worked very well for them the past two years.
But the cat is out of the bag now, so to speak. Milan, here they come.
“At this point, I would say you can expect us shooting for our third Olympics. We’re so close (to it) … it’s really only a year and a half (away). And so for us to not consider taking that opportunity to go to our third Olympic Games and, you know, push for a medal, I think would be silly,” Gilles explained earlier this week. “We already kind of know what we want to skate to, so it kind of feels like we’re already preparing (for 2026) and it feels exciting. I think it feels different than we did going into our second Games (in 2022 in Beijing) because of COVID, having that underlying ‘Is this actually gonna happen?’ (feeling). You know, there’s so much pressure that you put on yourself and you want to perform under those difficult circumstances. And I don’t know, it just feels like a relief.”
Beijing was also a Winter Games with no spectators in the stands, meaning no chance to perform before your family and friends. Gilles and Poirier have talked about how much it meant to them to have most everyone they love at the Bell Centre in Montreal to watch them skate to a silver medal at 2024 Worlds. Now they’d like to share that same feeling at Olympics in Milan.
“We can finally celebrate skating in front of people, and our families and everybody can be there in those moments,” said Gilles. “Yeah, I think you can definitely expect (seeing us at) the next Olympics and pushing for a medal.”
About that wedding …
You’d think just training for a new season would be enough to keep Gilles and Poirier occupied in the weeks leading up to Skate Canada International. But the 32-year-old Gilles had another kind of preparing to do — for the wedding celebration she and husband Nathan Kelly held in Toronto on the first Saturday of October. To hear her tell it, all went about as well as she’d hoped.
“Honestly, I think we managed it really well. It’s quite laughable that I was able to plan a wedding and do that kind of stuff when Paul and I are at the heaviest of our training time,” she said. “But it’s weird to say, I thrive in chaos, which is totally absurd and strange. And you know, I even think back to the year I was sick (the ovarian cancer she had to battle). I had so many things going on in my life and it almost helped me treat skating just as my job and not make it my full focus, and I think that really helped me just kind of show up when I needed to. And not stress over the little things and be like, ‘oh well, today’s training wasn’t as good as it could be.’ Then it brings that energy into the next day. We go in and skate. So I kind of think it created a nice balance. It’s made our whole team come together because they know there’s so much other outside things going on.”
From Poirier’s view, the wedding celebration was a “beautiful” occasion.
“It was so much fun … of course, Piper and I have been skating partners for so long, our lives are so closely intertwined. And so it was just nice to see so many different people from different parts of Piper’s life just coming together and celebrating and being a part of that,” he said. “Those moments in our life are so rare, really, and so it was just a really special day and it was so nice to be able to celebrate with Piper and Nathan.”
CBC is back for Skate Canada
Earlier this week, the post below popped up in our Twitter (or X, officially) feed … word from one of the folks involved that, after a one-year absence, Skate Canada International is returning to the CBC airwaves.
As you can see by the pic, you’ll hear the voices of the always excellent Brenda Irving (play-by-play), alongside analysts Kurt Browning and Carol Lane. While the latter’s post suggests we’ll see them in Halifax, their commentary may well be emanating from the CBC’s studios in downtown Toronto. It’s where they were positioned for the World Championships back in March in Montreal, where only the now-retired Scott Russell was on site as a host/interviewer (no word yet on who will try to fill those enormous shoes).
We’ll aim to get more details on all of this in the days to come, but live TV coverage is planned on the Saturday and Sunday afternoons. The entire event will be streamed live on cbcsports.ca and CBC Gem.
Meanwhile, CBC’s Grand Prix streaming schedule launches this weekend from Skate America in Texas. Here’s when to watch (all times Eastern):
Canada will be represented in two events at Skate America. Reigning national champion Wesley Chiu gets his Grand Prix season started in Allen, Texas (he’s also in Cup of China later in the season), and will face a field headlined by world champion Ilia Malinin of the United States.
Two of the top contenders for the No. 3 spot in Canadian ice dance square off for the first time this weekend. Marie-Jade Lauriault and Romain Le Gac, who were the silver medallists at 2024 nationals in Calgary, make their first of two GP assignments (you’ll also see them later in their native France), while Alicia Fabbri and Paul Ayer — among the entries next week in Halifax — get an earlier season start as last-minute substitutes this weekend. They stood on the podium as bronze medallists in Ayer’s hometown of Calgary.
(it should be noted that the ice dance event at 2024 nationals didn’t include Canada’s then-second and third-ranked teams: Laurence Fournier Beaudry/Nikolaj Soerensen and Marjorie Lajoie/Zachary Lagha. Both couples would later represent Canada at 2024 Worlds in Montreal).
Around the boards
One of the hot topics on Thursday was the status of Stellato-Dudek’s bid to obtain her Canadian citizenship in time for Milan 2026, a must if she wants to represent the country at an Olympics. While it’s not quite a done deal yet, she said things are moving a little closer to the finish line. “What I'll say is … there have been new developments and things are moving in the right direction.” Though she didn’t want to say much more than that, she sounds confident the process will finish in time. And when that day comes, she’ll be eager to share it with the 10,000 or so people that signed a petition on change.org as a show of support. “I am going to make a public post because there’s been so many people who signed that petition for me. And I really appreciate that,” she said. “And I feel like I owe it to the people that signed the petition to kind of let them know” … The Metropole Nice Cote d’Azur is underway in France this week. It’s a Challenger Series event for seniors, but the competition also includes junior events. It was a golden occasion for Canada’s Parker Heiderich, who narrowly edged American Lorenzo Elano by 1.22 points for the junior men’s gold medal, while Canada’s Reese Rose took home a silver medal among junior women. Senior competition continued Friday, with Toronto-based Nadiia Bashynska and Peter Beaumont placing seventh in the rhythm dance. The free dance is Sunday. Canada has two entries in the women’s event, Breken Brezden and Fee Ann Landry, and they get started Saturday with the short program.