Some question-able thoughts ... and maybe a few answers
The start of every skating season brings with it a new sense of wonder. Here's a few things that have me thinking about what's next.
First off, an admission. I am most definitely not a lists guy. Think there are too many of them out there and the majority of them, quite frankly, are blatant pieces of clickbait (you know, the ones with headlines like ‘The Best Places To Visit in This Country, ranked.’ That comma being there, of course, to goad you into thinking ‘this is a list, I must read it’). Now, some of them are indeed very clever and will get my attention. But for the most part, I feel more than a little ‘listed out’ at times.
All of that is a preamble to what you are about to read (or so I hope!). Consider this merely a group of questions about the upcoming season in a certain sport that may add up to a certain number. But it is most definitely not one of those … well, you know.
Now that I’ve got that out of the way …
(talk about burying the lede. Not exactly Journalism 101, right?)
A couple of weeks back, I posted a primer on the upcoming figure skating season, and what fans and general observers might want to keep an eye on when it comes to competitors from Canada. This, um, series of questions is meant as a companion piece to that, with some of the queries that most intrigue me about the campaign to come (I’ll reserve the right to perhaps update this a few times in the next few months. Hey, I’m a sports writer. The questions never truly do end, right?).
Anyways, here’s what is on my mind in the middle of August … with the caveat being that a whole lot can happen between now and March. It’s a long season, folks.
Will Canada land on the podium at the World Championships in Montreal?
This is the easy choice for the biggest question of the season — and of course, we won’t get the final answer until the proceedings at the Bell Centre end in March. But taking the loooong range view from seven months out (and so much can happen between now and then), I’m going to answer this one with a very cautious yes.
The most obvious place to start here is in the ice dance event, which has by far produced the most World medals for Canada in the last decade or so. And the memory of Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier producing a well-earned bronze medal at 2023 Worlds in Saitama, Japan, remains fresh. But this one is hardly a lock. Examine the results in Saitama a little more closely, and you’ll see Gilles and Poirier were only three points or so better than the always entertaining British duo of Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson, who are a team seriously on the rise, and fellow Canadians Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Nikolaj Soerensen. We’ll see how much difference a year makes in what should be a true battle among five or six teams for the podium in Montreal.
The only other real hope comes in pairs, where Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps finished just off the podium in fourth place in Saitama. The story to watch here, though, may have been two places behind them, where Lia Pereira and Trennt Michaud finished about seven points behind in their first shot at Worlds. They went home with a serious amount of momentum and have plenty of room still to grow, being that they’ve only been together for a year. The thought here is that by next March, they may just be ready to challenge for the Worlds podium.
Can Maddie Schizas make it a Canadian Championships three-peat in Calgary?
Two years ago, Schizas stepped onto the big stage in Ottawa and made it her own, dominating nationals in a way we hadn't really seen since Kaetlyn Osmond won back-to-back national titles in 2013 and 2014 in decisive fashion. It seemed Schizas might be set up to do the same kind of thing, but then came 2023 nationals in Oshawa. While she retained her title, it hardly came easily for the 20-year-old from Oakville, Ontario. In fact, it was up-and-coming Kaiya Ruiter who won the free skate at the event, making Schizas sweat a little bit before the gold medal was again hers.
All of which is to say that if a three-peat is in the cards — it would be the first such streak in the women’s event since Joannie Rochette won six in a row from 2005-10 — it isn’t going to be a walk in the park. Ruiter will surely push hard for her first national title and Fiona Bombardier is a young talent on a definite upswing. The 2016 Canadian Championships in Halifax, in which Alaine Chartrand outduelled Osmond and Gabrielle Daleman for gold, was the greatest three-way battle for women’s gold we’d seen in years (perhaps ever). Selfishly, I’d like to see a replay of that in Calgary in January. Then again, wouldn’t you, too?
Which Stephen Gogolev will we see this season?
I have to admit I have rarely seen a skater look so despondent, so lost as Gogolev did after he completely botched his short program in Oshawa. While he tends to be a young man of few words in the media mixed zone, he struggled to come up with any sort of explanation for the disaster that left him in 17th place, one spot from the bottom (none of us in the media corps had the heart to keep him for more than a few questions afterward).
All of which made his Phoenix-like rise from the ashes a night later all the more stunning. Gogolev brought the house down at Tribute Communities Centre with a sublime free skate that included three quads and a pair of triple Axels, and won the segment by almost seven points. It wasn’t enough to land him on the podium (he placed fourth overall), but it was a reminder of the talent that won him the Junior Grand Prix Final in 2018 and produced a senior silver medal at Canadians a few months later in Saint John, New Brunswick. If that Gogolev shows up regularly in the season ahead, he’ll be a major contender to win his first Canadian title in Calgary. But that remains a very big ‘if’ until we see it for real consistently.
Is it time for Wesley Chiu to take the next big step?
It was back in the 2021-22 season that Chiu, then 16 years old, first broke into the spotlight in a big way. He won gold and bronze medals on the Junior Grand Prix circuit, then made his senior debut at the Canadian Championships in Ottawa and, after placing second in the short program, wound up with a bronze medal. In summing up his season afterward, the 2020 Canadian junior champion was quoted as saying it was “like a rocket ship because it kept going higher and higher and kept getting better.” (this was before he placed fourth at the World Junior Championships in Estonia, which included another second-place finish in the short program).
The rocket ship levelled off a bit in the past season, with Chiu again placing third at Canadians and following that up with a fifth-place finish at Junior Worlds in the same building in Calgary where 2024 nationals will be held (he again won the small silver medal for a second-place effort in the short program). What’s next for the still young skater, who turned 18 in March? With Keegan Messing now retired, the door is wide open in the men’s event in Canada, and it says here there may be no better time than the present for Chiu to make his move and ascend to the top of the podium for the first time. To extend the earlier metaphor a little bit, an extra supply of rocket fuel might just be the thing to get him there.
Are Marjorie Lajoie and Zachary Lagha ready to join the world’s best?
When Canada placed a pair of ice dance teams in the top five at Worlds in Saitama, it opened up a third spot for 2024 Worlds in Montreal. And nobody likely cheered more loudly about that than Lajoie and Lagha, who live and train in Montreal and would dearly love to compete in front of a hometown crowd at the Bell Centre (something they were denied in 2020 when Worlds in Montreal was one of the first big sporting events cancelled by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic).
Lajoie and Lagha, whose high energy style makes them crowd favourites, made all kinds of noise in the junior ranks. They won three straight national junior titles and, in 2019, became only the second team from Canada to win the World Junior ice dance title (Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir were the first in 2006. You may have heard of them). Their climb at the senior level has been steady, and they already have two World Championships and the Beijing Olympics (where they placed 13th) on their resume. But the 2022-23 season showed this team is poised to make a bigger leap in the back end of this Olympic quadrennial.
After winning gold at a pair of Challenger Series events, Lajoie and Lagha were bronze medallists at both their Grand Prix competitions (in Canada and Great Britain). They came within a whisker of claiming their first senior Canadian title in January in Oshawa, finishing just 0.60 points behind their training mates, Fournier Beaudry and Soerensen (Gilles and Poirier missed the event because of a medical issue). Then they claimed bronze at Four Continents in Colorado Springs, their first ISU Championships senior medal, which Lagha would call “the cherry on top of a perfect season.” Now it’s a matter seizing upon that momentum in a new season and making an even bigger leap into an echelon with the world’s best.