'The goal is just to keep climbing'
They're on top of the pairs world right now, but Canada's Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps aim to get even better in pursuit of their golden Olympic dream
When you’re world champions, there’s not a moment to waste if you want to stay on top for much longer. Fortunately for Deanna Stellato-Studek and Maxime Deschamps, that’s a mindset that fits squarely into their wheelhouse.
So it was that the Montreal-based duo, who won the world pairs title in dramatic and historic fashion back in March, didn’t need long to find the inspiration to step up their game even further for the 2024-25 season.
The day after the 2024 World Championships in Montreal ended, to be exact.
That’s how quickly the Canadian team and their coaches flipped to script to a new season, and began working on a throw-triple Lutz — the kind of big element that the mathematically-inclined Stellato-Dudek believes could give them an extra edge when it comes to defending their World crown in Boston in March. And for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, for that matter.
“I’ve always had this plan and I thought, this is what we’re going to need. It is a point more (in base value) than the (throw-triple Salchow), so it’s a significant point,” explained Stellato-Dudek. “If it was .1 or .2, you could potentially make that up in GOE (Grade of Execution). But one point, no, that’s not going to happen. We really wanted to have that throw lutz in our arsenal for this year and we don’t want to add it Olympics year as the first year. So this seemed like a good year to do it, and it’s been going really well.”
And that’s why, in between enjoying a victory lap of sorts during Stars On Ice tours in Japan and Canada, she and Deschamps carved out some practice time to make attempts at the new throw. Lots and lots of them.
“We got a limited amount of practice time when we were on tour,” she said. “We would warm up our jumps and do our twists and things like that, and then we would do throw lutz the entire rest of the session. That’s it, that’s all we would do. We did at least 50 a session.”
As Deschamps will tell you — and has done so on many occasions — “every day is like the Olympics” when he trains with his very determined and driven partner, still going strong at 41 years old. And there was no chance this team would rest on its laurels after winning a World championship.
“It’s a new start,” he said of their approach to the upcoming season. “We always just look to beat our own selves, to improve, and that’s what we’re aiming for again this season. And we will see where that brings us.”
It’s also safe to say that they will do it their own way, with their own personal stamp on the new programs they have cooked up with coaches Josee Picard and Julie Marcotte. For the short program, they have chosen Beyonce’s 2014 remix of “Crazy In Love,” from the “Fifty Shades of Grey” soundtrack.
“There’s a lot of focus on my age, which is understandable and fine. But I really wanted to lean into that, since there is so much focus on that, and I want to offer something that nobody else can, which is a man and a woman on the ice in a sensual relationship,” said Stellato-Dudek. “It’s very different from last year, we’re still being original within the new concept, and we look forward to showing it this year.”
For the free program, they plan to take the audience into a patch of water that is anything but frozen, for an adventure that is uniquely their own.
“We’re trying to be like the dancers. Instead of following an exact story from a book or from a movie, we tried to come up with our own concept. And the concept this year is that Maxime is called to the water, and I represent the ocean,” said Stellato-Dudek. “I’m showing him the world underwater, all of the beauty and all of the danger, and he wants to stay with me and never leave, and I embrace him in this underwater world. So we’re bringing you all into the water, so bring your towels and your goggles.”
“For once, she doesn’t kill me at the end,” Deschamps added with a laugh, in a nod toward last season’s “Interview with the Vampire” program.
The new program is skated to four different pieces of music, “and they come from everywhere,” Deschamps said. They include the following: “Siren’s Song,” by Andrea Knux; “Mobula Rays,” by David Flemming, Hans Zimmer and Jacob Shea; “Lux,” by Ryan Taubert; and “The Blue Planet,” by Flemming, Zimmer and Shea.
“We wanted to find our own personal concept,” explained Stellato-Dudek. “And you know it’s very important for me to be original. I never want to skate to something that somebody else has skated to … (or the same) concepts and ideas. This was no different. This one is even further outside the box and so original to Maxime and I.”
Kinda fitting, don’t you think, for a pairs team whose story is about as original as it gets. You no doubt know the details: Stellato-Dudek left the sport for 16 years after being forced into retirement as a teenager due to a recurring hip injury. Deschamps went through eight partners, wondering if he’d ever find the right one. They joined forces in time for the 2019-20 season and, as the old saying goes, the rest is history. Everything from there led up to that magical March evening in Montreal, when they conquered the world.
It’s been a whirlwind for the duo ever since, so much so that Stellato-Dudek says they “haven’t really gotten past what happened in Montreal.”
“There really has been no time to absorb anything. We left from Worlds to do shows, got back, got new programs and started training again. This is one of the few sports where there’s really not an off-season. Things just kind of merged together. So I don’t think we have really gotten past it or fully absorbed it. But we’re so looking forward to getting this year started.”
And really, that’s how these two operate. Savour the moment, but remember it’s one step in a process they hope leads to the top of the podium in Milan.
“It’s more just a step in our career to go where we want to go,” Deschamps said of the World title. “It’s just one step more that we achieved.”
While Deschamps says he hasn’t watched a video of their Worlds-winning free skate “other than when were attending banquets when they were showing it,” Stellato-Dudek admits to having viewed it a few times. Yes, it’s still quite emotional for her, “which is another reason why it try not to watch it too much. It was a lifelong dream for Maxime and I … because the age is always such a focus, because we’ve been going after it for so long, it does have a greater meaning. Not just to us, but to a lot of people, it was really special.”
The day before Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps arrived at Skate Canada’s high-performance pre-season camp in Mississauga, Ontario, the International Skating Union released the video above, filmed during Worlds in Montreal, which detailed her comeback to the sport. It contains an anecdote that she’s shared many times, the one about when she had started a career as an aesthetician and attended a work retreat. As part of a team-building exercise, each person there had to choose a note card.
“The note card I picked out said ‘What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?’ And I just immediately blurted out, ‘oh, I would win an Olympic gold medal,’” she says during the video. “As everybody else was answering, I thought ‘what did I just say? I haven’t skated in like 16 or 17 years. That was a random answer.’ That was the catalyst that began this entire thing.”
All these years later, her answer to that question has clearly moved within the realm of reality. Two years out from Milan, the Canadian duo now rates as a favourite for Olympic gold.
“We have confidence that it can happen,” said Stellato-Dudek. “I think I had to have that confidence, whether I realized it or not, when I came back onto the ice. I definitely have confidence in myself, in Maxime and in the team. You have to believe … if you don’t believe, who else will?”
And yes, even two years away, the 2026 Olympics are front of mind.
“I’ve had music picked out for four years. It’s just a matter of whether or not it gets vetoed by the team. Definitely … it’s four-year build, right, so each thing is a stepping stone within every aspect,” she said. “So within your originality, your program, what you’re picking to skate to, your technical, everything. It’s a stepping stone up until the Olympics. Last year was just a great stepping stone for us, but now the work is going to continue to try to be at the top, stay at the top, especially in the Olympic year.”
Added Deschamps: “It’s a new buildup right from this season all the way to Olympics. It’s a buildup, trying new stuff and everything, so we can be ready.”
That’s why the upcoming season can be seen as an important building block into that Olympic season. “For this season, we really want to have more transition together by keeping the speed. More interpretation to the music, even more,” said Deschamps. “This is a big goal and we have (new) technical elements this year. We have the throw (triple) lutz and changed some lifts. So we did a lot of little changes here and there.”
As we suggested earlier, World champions don’t stay there by standing still. And they surely don’t become Olympic gold medallists that way, either. So it is that Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps know they are only part way up the proverbial mountain, even if the peak is well within their sights.
“The goal is just to keep climbing. Like I said, it’s a four-year (process). We have this season and we have next season. The season is long and so many things can change. We added a more difficult throw, hopefully next season we can add more difficult jump sequences,” said Stellato-Dudek. “But it’s a step by step process. We hope to include some more (higher) levels in our program, things of that nature. All of that really makes a difference and matters. We won the components at Worlds, and that’s what we want to keep. In order to keep that, we have to be better than ourselves last year.”
Junior pairs starting strong
The pair success keeps continuing for Canadian skaters on the Junior Grand Prix circuit, with the red maple leaf rising above the podium at a Series event for the second straight week.
The Quebec duo of Julia Quattrocchi and Simon Desmarais made an impressive debut on the Series, at this weekend’s stop, Czech Skate in Ostrava, Czechia. With a spectacular free skate on Friday, which was judged the best in the field, Quattrocchi and Desmarais moved up from fourth after the short program to earn the bronze medal in the event. This followed a silver-medal finish by Oakville-based Jazmine Desrochers and Kieran Thrasher at the season opening stop in Riga, Latvia.
Reigning Canadian junior ice dance champions Layla Veillon and Alexander Brandys put themselves in position to claim some Junior GP hardware by placing third in Friday’s rhythm dance, less than a point behind Americans Katarina Wolfkostin and Dmitry Tsarevski heading into Saturday’s free dance final. Veillon and Brandys are coached by Scott and Cara Moir at the Ice Academy of Montreal’s satellite school near London, Ontario.
In the men’s event, David Bondar of Richmond Hill, Ontario, placed seventh in a field of 30. He is coached by Lee Barkell at the Granite Club in Toronto.
Canadian duo just misses Challenger medal
While we’re on the pairs theme … Montreal-based Kelly Ann Laurin and Loucas Ethier placed fourth at the John Nicks International Pairs Competition, a Challenger Series event held last weekend in New York.
Laurin and Ethier, who made their World Championships debut in Montreal back in March, fell just short of a podium finish by 2.88 points.