Still rockin' after all these years
At 53 years old, Elvis Stojko isn't ready to hang up his skates just yet. And he can't wait to perform in a Stars On Ice tour with a theme that's tailor-made for him
When you first hear the theme for this year’s Stars On Ice tour, you immediately think one thing … man, Elvis is gonna love this. And not just because of the first name that is surely mindful of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.
Yeah, Rock Stars On Ice, as the 2025 tour is called, is made for Elvis Stojko.
“It’s rock stuff, which is right up my alley,” agrees the 53-year-old headliner of the tour, which begins its Canadian leg April 25 at Scotiabank Centre in Halifax, its long-traditional launching point (there are nine more stops along the way before the tour shifts to the United States for seven dates)
Show director/choreographer Kurt Browning says credit for that theme choice goes to his wife, Alissa Czisny, who’s again his co-conspirator in all the fun and entertainment you’ll see on the ice.
“She was inspired by Stars shows from the past where she remembers watching and thinking the skaters were like rock stars and she wanted to bring that feeling to life in this show,” said Browning.
Such a choice, of course, opens fully wide a massive catalogue of music options. Stojko, for one, admits it made choosing the pieces he wanted to skate to a bit of a chore — or perhaps a labour of love, depending on how you want to look at it. But he’s excited to show what he came up with.
“One piece is Metallica, ‘Nothing Else Matters.’ It’s a piece that I’ve wanted to skate to for years, but never got a chance to. The other one is a medley of like, eight songs,” he explained. “We’ve got Van Halen pieces, we’ve got Phil Collins, we’ve got Whitesnake, we’ve got AC/DC, we’ve got Queen.”
There’s more than a little bit of nostalgia wrapped up in all of that for folks of a certain vintage. At least, that how Stojko hopes it plays out.
“I tried to pull it all together in a way that will really have people sitting there going, ‘Oh, I know this piece,’ and just get into it,” he said.
And on and on it goes from there. Here’s how Browning put it in a quick summary of some of the highlights you’ll see if you’re among those taking in the show (dates are all listed near the bottom of this column).
“‘Mama Let Him Play’ by Jerry Doucette is the opening. The end of Act 1 is a compilation of the famous (rock) riffs we all know and love,” he said. “We use many songs in this one and Elvis has his solo just before it and that is a medley as well, so we have built an intro into his solo and connected it to this group number we call Riff Raff.
“We call the finale ICONS. Each skater has a mini solo to the iconic rock star we have picked out for them. Paul (Poirier) is a Freddy Mercury. Satoko (Miyahara) is Cher. Elvis is Dee Snider from Twisted Sister. Keegan (Messing) is a Bruce Springsteen.
“Each skater has two solos and we almost have at least one of their solos be a rock tune in some way. Nam (Nguyen) has a Beatles medley for one of his solos for example. We added a group slow beautiful number as well. Alissa picked the music, ‘Brothers In Arms’ (the Dire Straits classic), and choreographed it as well.”
There was a time, not all that long ago, when Browning himself would have been the headliner of the show. But that duty now falls to Stojko who, on the day we chatted earlier this week, was in the middle of a whirlwind of media appearances to promote the show.
“It brings me back to the days when I used to have my own tour, back in the ’90s and early 2000s, so I kind of got slipped right in to that position,” he said. “And I’m busy with media. I was still doing a lot with Kurt, even on the tour, but now it’s mostly me, which is fine. Yeah, it takes me back to that time. And I’m kind of kind of flattered in a way because they still remember me.”
If you’ve been around this sport long enough, you know Stojko’s competitive career was the stuff of legend. Two Olympic silver medals, three World titles, seven Canadian crowns, with quads aplenty along the way. He retired from that side of the sport in 2002 at age 30. Did he imagine he’d still be on the ice nearly a quarter century later, in the fashion he is now? Hardly.
“I didn’t think I’d be this far going into it. And I wanted to get into the two other things I was passionate about, which was acting and racing cars. And I think those two things, they’re going hand in hand, which is great,” he said. “I’ve got stuff in the works for the season for racing, and then I’ve got stuff to do (with acting) auditions, and I’ve got a gig that I'm shooting now that I can’t let out of the bag yet, but it will come out later on. It’ll be known, it’s pretty big. It’s on one of the streaming services.
“But in my wildest dreams, I never thought I’d be still skating. I thought, I don’t know if I want to keep doing this until I’m 50. And then here I am at 53 still going, still rocking it (literally, in the case of this year’s tour).”
How much longer he’ll go, Stojko isn’t sure. He’s aware that Browning lasted until he was 57 before hanging up his tour skates for good. But he admits, a lot of it depends on where things like auto racing take him. He now owns his international C racing licence, which opens that door a little wider, but things like sponsorship dollars are key in making it work long term in that sport.
“I’ve been training quite a bit and being competitive, no matter what I’m jumping into. So it’s a matter if that takes off and I can sustain financially what I need to do then, I may have to jump ship and go in that direction,” said Stojko, who often drives at tracks in Shannonville and Calabogie in Eastern Ontario (there’s also a track near Bowmanville, east of Toronto, where he and his wife Gladys Orozco live on a 140-acre spread).
“It does take up a lot of time, and it is physically demanding, racing prototype cars. Man, they’re fast, and you’ve got to be in tip top shape. So that’s the other thing, too, is staying in shape and training and having that time. So right now, I’m basically doing three careers in one.”
He speaks passionately about a 12-hour relay race he did last year in Wales for Operation Motorsport, a group based in Bolton, Ontario, and Raleigh, North Carolina, that helps support retired veterans (it’s run by Diezel Lodder, an American veteran, and his wife Tiffany).
“They basically help retired, medically released veterans to connect back into society through motorsports and through the team that I work with, Rilli Racing. Steffen (Rilli, the team’s owner) is also a veteran,” he said. “It’s a 12-hour race, and it's done on Remembrance Day weekend, and we celebrate the veterans … some of them had never even worked on a car. A few of them jump in the car and race, and but most of them pulled together as a (pit crew), and it’s phenomenal.
“So I was asked to be one of the drivers for the Canadian team and I was honoured. This year, we’re doing it in Virginia. They want me to race again and I promote their cause, and it’s a pretty amazing thing. The people are amazing, and it was very eye opening, meeting a lot of them, and I thought it was inspirational.”
Bringing this conversation back to skating, we touched on the remarkable things that the “Quad God,” Ilia Malinin (who’ll be part of the U.S. shows on the tour), has been putting out on the ice. And as someone whose constant calling card during his competitive career was pushing the envelope technically — he was one of the original quad gods, you could say — Stojko admires the heck out of what he sees.
“I literally had this conversation this morning on (Sirius) XM Radio, and I was talking about how quickly this the sport has progressed in the last couple years. For a while there, the quad was still difficult to do for many, many years,” he said. “And now, they’re doing multiple quads and things like that … the talent level is just crazy amazing.
“And to watch what (Malinin) is doing, to do quad Axel … I’ve done them on the harness many, many years ago. I did up to quad Lutz. But to think of doing quad Axel, I knew that was a big step. I knew someone would be crazy enough to work on it. When I saw (Yuzuru) Hanyu trying them, I’m like, oh yeah, they’re gonna (do it) … I saw him do a few in practice and I’m like, someone’s gonna do it, it’s just a matter of time. And then bam, then Ilia has come out and done it.”
He expects that’ll lead to even more of them in the future.
“They’ve seen one guy and they’re like, oh, this guy’s done it. Okay, it’s possible. And then you just go for it, right?” he said. “It’s kind of like the four-minute mile. It was impossible until one person did it (Roger Bannister, in 1954) and everyone’s like, yeah, we can do it. And then they go and do it.”
Stojko enjoys being the one to help cement such dreams in young skaters’ minds. He and Orozco do seminars from coast to coast, with some skating carnivals mixed in between (“we did it all through January, February, March and April, right up to tour”) and he’s also teamed up with Browning, his competitive rival from way back in the 1990s, for seminars along the way.
“Kurt and I did one (seminar) and then everyone jumped on it. Hey, we want Kurt and Elvis. So then we started doing some seminars together,” he said. “And then Gladys and I and Kurt, we have done some seminars together.”
One of the joys of the past few years for Stojko has been the opportunity to build a stronger relationship with Browning. It wasn’t the easiest thing during their competitive days, although Stojko insists there was never any bitterness between them, just healthy respect. But as the years have gone by, it’s grown to be something more than that (remember those ‘I Heart Elvis’ and ‘I Heart Kurt’ T-shirts during Browning’s farewell tour two years ago?).
“That’s been a lot of fun. Kurt and I have actually talked about that, how our relationship (has grown) the last number of years since we’ve been touring more together. We’ve gotten to know each other even better,” he explained. “We’ve talked about our times competing against each other. And we’ve been talking about relationships and wives and kids and just regular life stuff It’s been really cool, because I know that our families fought against each other (during their competitive years) because it was so intense, and we got along all the time.”
Stojko fondly recalls a recent time when he and Orozco went to Alberta, the heart of Browning country, for a seminar and it turned into an occasion to meet up with some family members from the other side of their rivalry.
“During a seminar I did out in Rocky Mountain House (Browning’s birthplace), believe it or not, Kurt, myself, Gladys and I had dinner at the old farmhouse with his sister and his family and cousins and nieces and nephews, and I was just like, this is really cool,” he said. “And we went out for dinner, Gladys and I, and we were there for hours, and had a blast.
“We had old stories that Kurt and I talked about and it was really kind of a neat moment. And in a way, it was a little surreal because of all the years we had competed (against each other) and now, with where we are in our lives and what had gone on. The intensity of competition at that level is so high, it does leave an emotional … I’m not going to say it’s scarring, but it leaves an emotional mark of intensity, and it’s something that you live with.
“If I think back on ’98 (the year he won a silver medal at the Nagano Olympics while skating through a painful groin injury), I remember those emotions vividly, like I could go back there easily, and those emotions would trigger for me, or any of those (moments). It’s intensity and then sharing that, when you have that, and competing with somebody who’s your biggest rival. There’s lots to share, because it’s a lonely place to be when you’re out there.”
And now they’ll be rocking across the country together in this latest Stars On Ice adventure, one as the tour headliner, the other directing at all from behind the scenes beginning in less than a week. For those who’d like to see it all, the dates for the Canadian tour are as follows:
April 25 — Halifax (Scotiabank Centre), 7 p.m.
April 27 — Ottawa (Canadian Tire Centre), 4 p.m.
April 29 — Laval, Que. (Place Bell), 7 p.m.
April 30 — Oshawa, Ont. (Tribute Communities Centre), 7 p.m.
May 2 — Toronto (Coca-Cola Coliseum), 7 p.m.
May 3 — St. Catharines, Ont. (Meridian Centre), 7 p.m.
May 4 — London, Ont. (Canada Life Centre), 4 p.m.
May 9 — Saskatoon (SaskTel Centre), 7 p.m.
May 11 — Edmonton (Rogers Place), 4 p.m.
May 13 — Vancouver (Rogers Arena), 7 p.m.
Tickets for all the shows can be purchased at this link.
World Team Trophy
For Canada at the World Team Trophy competition — which concluded Saturday in Tokyo — things went about the way one might have expected.
Ice dancers Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, the two-time World silver medallists, were the stars of the show, placing second behind World champions Madison Chock and Evan Bates of the United States in both segments. Along the way, the produced season’s best scores for both the free dance (131.91) and overall total (219.06).
Canadian pair champions Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps placed fourth in both their skates, while three-time national champ Maddie Schizas had the top performance by an individual skater, placing sixth in the short program and seventh in the free. Canadian men’s champion Roman Sadovsky was ninth in both segments, the short a season’s best (84.75).
Sara-Maude Dupuis (10th in both programs) and Aleksa Rakic (10th in the short, 11th in the free) rounded out the Canadian squad in Tokyo.
Add it all up and Canada landed in fifth place out of six teams, just six points behind France in fourth and 14 back of the medals. The U.S., with its star studded squad featuring three of the four World champions from last month in Boston, easily won the gold (see results above).
“We all had a lot of fun this week and most importantly, we were there to cheer on our teammates,” Gilles, the Canadian team captain, said per a Skate Canada release. “We felt the support and encouragement, which makes a big difference. We’re getting closer to those medals, and we’re just super proud of this team.”