'We have really high goals this year'
Canadian ice dancers Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Nikolaj Soerensen are aiming higher than ever with the World Championships coming to their home in Montreal.
Three years ago, just getting there would have been an achievement.
But when the World Figure Skating Championships get a Montreal do-over in March 2024, ice dancers Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Nikolaj Soerensen want to be much more than just participants in what will be an emotional homecoming for them. This time, their eyes are on the biggest prize of all.
“We have really high goals this year. Not just a medal (at Worlds), but the medal that everybody really wants,” said the 34-year-old Soerensen. “We think it’s really possible. We’ve seen anything can happen in figure skating these days and we’re really hopeful.”
The Canadian ice dance duo surely has reason to think that way, coming off what was a milestone season for them in 2022-23. It included their first Grand Prix event victory, at NHK Trophy in Japan, and their first Canadian title in January in Oshawa, Ontario. There was also a silver medal at the Four Continents Championships in Colorado Springs, their first podium finish at an ISU championships. It was the product of a team that, both in their 30s, is closer to the end of the line than the beginning, and for that reason savours every second of their time on the ice like perhaps never before.
“We really wanted to elevate our enjoyment of skating, and remember and remind ourselves why we started to do it to begin with,” said Soerensen. “You get close to the end and you say ‘wow, let’s just try to enjoy this as much as possible.’ And it showed every day in practice, and it came to life in competition. That was really the gist of last year’s energy.”
The fact Worlds is in Montreal — where Fournier Beaudry and Soerensen, a native of Denmark who became a Canadian citizen in 2021, have lived for 13 years now — made it a “no brainer” to return for another season. But Soerensen admitted there is a moment after every season when the duo at least considers the thought of what life would be like without skating.
“I think I quit every year, and I think it’s important to do so. It’s an exercise we practise, just allowing yourself to quit and see what that feels like,” he said.
“Just remember why you do it, why we want to do it and why we love to do it. It just puts everything back into perspective,” interjected Fournier-Beaudry.
Said Soerensen: “With Worlds being in Montreal, we knew we were continuing. Still practised quitting a couple of times and that’s fine. Not in the literal sense but just in the mental sense. But yeah, we knew we were continuing for sure. It’s so rare for athletes to have this opportunity, so passing that up would not be cool.”
Added Fournier Beaudry: “And like we’ve said, it’s like once in a lifetime that you can experience having Worlds in your home country and your city. Unless you’re from Japan, I guess. We’ve done three World Championships in Japan (in 2014, 2019 and 2023).”
Truth be told, Fournier Beaudry, 31, and Soerensen thought that once in a lifetime opportunity would come in Montreal in 2020, when Worlds was first scheduled to be held at the Bell Centre. It was why the couple pushed so hard to make it back for the competition, after Soerensen underwent a complicated surgery to relieve persistent pain in his right knee (it involved a cartilage graft and meniscectomy). While it forced them to take a pass on the Canadian Championships and Four Continents, Soersensen was hopeful his knee would recover in time for Worlds. It wasn’t to be, but their disappointment was mitigated to a degree when the event was postponed by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We pushed really hard to be able to go to Worlds,” recalled Soerensen. “And a week before it got cancelled, Mike (Slipchuk, Skate Canada’s high performance director) and Shae (Zukiwsky, SC’s senior director of performance excellence) came out and we said ‘listen, it’s not necessary to go out and perform not at your best, just for one thing.’ So we pulled out and then five days later, it was cancelled.”
Fournier Beaudry called it “a year of struggle because he was in a lot of pain and we managed to do both of our Grand Prixs ... We knew that he needed surgery and we wanted to do Worlds, so it was how fast can we make it (back). But it finally got cancelled in the end.”
After a mostly lost season for Canadian skaters in 2020-21 that did include an eighth-place finish at Worlds in Sweden, Fournier Beaudry and Soerensen turned in their most successful campaign yet a year later, winning bronze medals at each of their Grand Prix events (Skate America and Rostelecom Cup) and placing ninth in both their Olympic debut in Beijing and at the subsequent Worlds in France.
That set the table for their season of firsts in 2022-23.
Now, they are aiming even higher in a new season, and they will bring two styles of music and dance to the ice. “It’s fun because both of our programs are pretty different. The free dance is a little more dramatic and the short dance is a little bit more happy,” said Fournier Beaudry.
The theme for the rhythm dance this season (1980s music) is sure to bring plenty of fun and smiles for both skaters and fans alike. For Fournier Beaudry and Soerensen, the music choice will come from the “Top Gun” movie soundtrack (which earned movie stardom for Tom Cruise).
“It’s something that we’ve been wanting to do for awhile, actually,” said Soerensen. “We tried to make it work for blues for the year of the Olympics and then we were like, maybe it can be a free dance. Nope, definitely going to be the ’80s program. We had a lot of fun with that, and we like the theme for the program. We’ve had a lot of fun doing it.”
Added Fournier Beaudry, with a smile: “I think it’s the dream of the guys to be Maverick and portray Tom Cruise.”
Audiences will see a much more dramatic side of the duo in the free dance, which will be skated to music selections from “Notre Dame de Paris,” a famed production which is in the midst of 25-year anniversary performances of the musical based on the work of French novelist Victor Hugo. The show made an appearance in Montreal in August, with Fournier Beaudry and Soersensen in the audience. In March 2024, if all goes as planned, they’ll bring their own interpretation of it to the World Championships.
“When we saw it, I was like ‘now I get why we are doing it.’ It’s not all the pieces of music that people would usually be skating to,” said Soerensen. “We’re really excited. The music is also something that was made by two people from Quebec (Luc Plamondon and Gilles Maheu). It will be nice to perform that in Montreal in front of a French-Canadian crowd. I think everybody in Montreal grew up listening to that music back in the ’90s.”
The idea began to ferment before last season’s World Championships, when the couple first discussed it with Marie-France Dubreuil, their coach and choreographer at the Ice Academy of Montreal.
“We kind of knew before Worlds actually. We spoke a little bit with Marie about what we wanted to do and what she wanted us to do,” explained Soerensen. “We weren’t sure how we were going to be able do it, because there’s so many famous pieces, and to not make the normal story. And there’s so many nuances and the story is different from the musical and there is three different endings in the different books that Victor Hugo wrote. Just exploring all the different male characters for me has been interesting, and then Laurence and the character of Esmeralda is something that is really, really close to her.”
Figure skating audiences will get their first chance to see it all next weekend at Finlandia Trophy, a Challenger Series event at which Fournier Beaudry and Soerensen are the defending champions. Then at the beginning of November, it’s the Grand Prix de France, which is being held in Angers for a second straight year (the Canadian duo took home a silver medal from that event in 2022). After that, it’s back to Espoo for their second Grand Prix of the season (which is set for Nov. 17-19 in Finland).
It’s most certainly in their plans to take another crack at the Grand Prix Final, which will be held this year in Beijing from Dec. 7-9. Again, Fournier Beaudry and Soerensen’s sights are set high.
“A medal at the Grand Prix Final is another big goal,” she said.
They’ll be the defending champions when the Canadian Championships are held in Calgary in January, and Soerensen said it’s “absolutely” their goal to earn a repeat title. “That’s the first step of the way (toward Worlds), right?”
And they’re planning to take several big ones this season.
The skating world was shocked back on Aug. 22 when former Canadian ice dancer Alexandra Paul, a 2014 Olympian with partner (and eventual husband) Mitch Islam, was tragically killed in an auto accident in Melancthon Township, Ontario, about an hour southwest of their home in Barrie. Paul left behind Islam, their infant son Charlie, and a promising career as a lawyer.
This week, the folks at ice-dance.com published a lovely tribute to Paul, which you can find here. Worth your time to take a look.
Canada officially has an entrant in the Junior Grand Prix Final, which will be held in early December in Beijing.
The pairs team of Martina Ariano Kent, of Mount Royal, Quebec, and Charly Laliberte-Laurent, of Boucherville, Quebec, wrapped up a coveted spot with a bronze-medal finish at the fifth event of the Series last weekend in Budapest, Hungary. Combined with a gold medal the duo earned at the beginning of September in Linz, Austria, it was more than enough to secure the ticket to Beijing for the duo, who are coached by Marc-Andre Craig and David Alexandre Paradis in Chambly, Quebec.