'We want to offer something different'
With the 2024 World Championships coming to their backyard, Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps say they are aiming even higher this season.
It was the kind of season worthy of reflection, worthy of taking at least a few moments to look back and savour a job so much more than just well done.
But that’s just not the way Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps operate. It’s been full steam ahead for the pairs team since the curtain came down on their season back in April at the World Team Trophy event in Japan.
“I don’t look back, I only look forward. The only way I look back on (last year) is who was in front of me and why. What do I need to do to run faster than them?” said Stellato-Dudek. “In my opinion, the Japanese (Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara, the newly minted World Champions), they were the fastest out of all the teams, so if we want to run with them, we have to run faster than them. We can’t keep running at the same speed. So we changed all of our lifts, except for one. We came up with a lot of new things.
“Worlds (in 2024) are in Canada, in Montreal, where we live and where Max was born. So this is a Worlds unlike any other, and we want to come out on top. We’re chasing the top.”
Understand that Stellato-Dudek marked her 40th birthday in June. Deschamps is 31 years old. And yet, this is a team that is far from satisfied, that doesn’t believe it is anywhere near its peak, that still has the enthusiasm and drive of a pair of twentysomethings. So that’s why a duo that already features high-quality lifts in its programs wants to raise that bar even higher.
“They’re even harder, and even more unique positions. So I know right now, the (lift) we are going to do in the star (position), you’re not going to see from anyone else. Both people have to be good at lifts for this to be done, because the balance point is about this big, so there’s not room for error on it,” Stellato-Dudek says, the small distance between her fingers emphasizing the point. “You won’t see that from anybody else, so we’re excited to offer that. And not just offer it, but do it well with lots of speed and flow coming out.
“I don’t want to do something you’re seeing from 20 other teams, I want to do something unique, something special, something that’s ours. So we took that into account when we were trying to figure out our lifts. The rules keep on getting harder, and they’re more limited in terms of what we can do and still get a Level 4. We really had to work to keep our uniqueness and still contain our levels and get good GOE (Grade of Execution).”
And being that last season didn’t finish until much later than usual — Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps had also competed at the World Championships for the first time together in March — it meant a much shorter off-season than usual, and a change in routine to navigate.
“It was a different summer than what we have been used to, because our season finished so late last year,” said Deschamps. “Doing the programs later and everything, that’s also been a challenge to acclimate to those changes. Usually, we are into training in June, but this year we were just making programs at that time. But it’s been a great summer.”
Added Stellato-Dudek: “Summer was pretty amazing (for us). We made a ton of improvements in our skating. We’re going for more power, more speed, more trajectory on the throws. Bigger everything, more powerful everything.”
Stellato-Dudek, an American from the Chicago area, has a story that is unique in skating and fairly well known in skating circles. She started into the sport as a singles skater, won the Junior Grand Prix final in the 1999-2000 season and was clearly someone on the rise. But by 2001, after enduring a rash of injuries, she decided to retire and began a career as an aesthetician. Fifteen years later, however, Stellato-Dudek got the skating bug again and returned as a pairs skater, teaming up with Nathan Bartholomay. They skated together for three seasons, finished third at the U.S. Championships on two occasions, but their partnership ended in 2019.
Then Stellato-Dudek’s search for a new partner brought her across the border to Montreal, where she found Deschamps, who had won a Canadian junior title with Vanessa Grenier in his younger days but hadn’t yet found the same success at the senior level. It took until their fourth year together — blame the COVID-19 pandemic, in great part, for that — for the duo to make a big impact on the international scene. But what a splash it was.
The 2022-23 season began with a gold medal at Nebelhorn Trophy (it was Stellato-Dudek’s first international title in 22 years). They made their Grand Prix debut at Skate America and skated to the silver medal, finishing just 3.5 points behind reigning World champions Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier. Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps followed that up with a gold medal at Grand Prix de France, a result that made her the oldest ever champion at a Grand Prix event. It qualified the duo for the Grand Prix Final in Turin, Italy, where they finished fourth.
By that point, Stellato-Dudek had begun to feel the effects of a respiratory virus that made her unable to breathe through her mouth. The illness lingered all the way through the Canadian championships in Oshawa, Ontario, but it didn’t prevent the duo from claiming their first national title together.
"I want it so badly because I want it for Max so much, because this is his 10th Canadian championship and last year I was so proud, I was the first partner (he) got a medal with in senior (at 2022 nationals),” Stellato-Dudek said before the event in explaining her desire to compete in Oshawa. “So, to be the partner that brings him the gold would be really special to me."
Her health improved significantly in time for the Four Continents Championship in Colorado Springs, where Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps claimed the bronze medal. They would go on to place fourth at Worlds in Saitama, with the Italian duo of Sara Conti and Niccolo Macii blocking the Canadians’ path to the podium.
“They’re very consistent,” Stellato-Dudek said of the Italians. “So that’s something we worked on as well, our consistency.”
Indeed, that is one of the top goals for the pair in the season ahead.
“Our short program last year, we had more success than our free. Our free was always riddled with mistakes. It wasn’t like one, it was many,” said Stellato-Dudek. “We were still scoring pretty decently. We would like to have cleaner longs with less mistakes and then see what our scores can really be.”
She and Deschamps turned in a personal best total score of 199.97 in Saitama, just a hair shy of the 200-point mark. It’s a barrier they’d like to break through this season, and they are obviously close.
“It’s always a score that we want to reach, because the only people we compete against is ourselves. At the end of the day, we’re the only ones on the ice. Whatever the other ones do, we have no control over it,” said Deschamps. “So we want to pass 200, go for 210, 215 this year. That is our main objective this year and we’ll see where that puts us (the winning score at Worlds last year was 222.16. It took 208.08 to reach the podium).”
The couple makes its season debut today right in their backyard, when Autumn Classic International, a Challenger Series event, kicks off in suburban Montreal at the Sportsplexe Pierrefonds. They will skate their short program to Cirque du Soleil’s version of “Oxygene,” which Deschamps calls “a famous song in Quebec.” And yes, that music choice was made with Montreal Worlds in mind.
“I feel we would have been remiss if we didn’t pay some homage to Quebec, where Max was born and where Worlds is being held,” said Stellato-Dudek. “So we wanted to pay tribute with this song to all of the Quebecers who are going to be in the audience watching us. So that’s what the short is, a tribute to Montreal.”
It’s their free program, however, that figures to be the eye opener. It is set to “Interview With The Vampire,” by Elliot Goldenthal, and is admittedly a very obvious attempt by the duo to truly stand out from the pairs crowd.
“We decided on something that nobody has ever done before,” said Stellato-Dudek, noting the vampire theme idea came from coach Josee Picard. “The man comes in and he is a vampire, they fall in love, he turns the other man into a vampire and they live this tumultuous life for hundreds of years until the other guy wants to kill the one that turned him into a vampire. I bite Max in the middle of the program, he turns into a vampire in the middle of the program. Then the second half, we’re going through as vampires together.
“I want us to offer you something different, so this is something different. You’re going to see two vampires, a tumultuous relationship, you’re going to see a bite, you’re going to see him turn. This is something different, and we hope we’ll stand out from everybody else.”
If all goes as planned, they’ll take that program all the way to the World Championships in Montreal. The opportunity to skate at such a huge event right at home is something Deschamps finds hard to describe.
“I don’t have words to put on it, for the emotions I will feel. I have never been to the Olympics, but this is going to feel like the Olympics for me,” he said. “Being home at the Bell Centre … I would go there to watch hockey games, the Montreal Canadiens, and it was always special. But being the one on the ice, being the one skating with all the people in the audience, will be special for sure. And all my family, everyone will be there, and it will be really fun.”
(UPDATE: Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps got their season off to a winning start by skating to the gold medal at Autumn Classic International. They finished 15.57 points in front of reigning world champions Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara of Japan. And that 200-point target the duo was chasing? Already checked off with a 203.62 total in Pierrefonds. Next stop for the duo: Skate Canada International in Vancouver at the end of October. Their second Grand Prix assignment later in the fall is Cup of China).
Here’s the schedule for Autumn Classic, which runs through Saturday:
TODAY: Pairs short program, 4:45 p.m.; women’s short program, 7 p.m.
FRIDAY: Men’s short program, 10:45 a.m.; ice dance rhythm dance, 1:10 p.m.; pairs free program, 3:25 p.m.; women’s free program, 6:05 p.m.
SATURDAY: Men’s free program, 12:05 p.m.; ice dance free dance, 3 p.m.
Skate Canada will livestream the event on its website.