'We're excited for next season'
After a debut season as pair team that produced some real successes to build on, Canada's Fiona Bombardier and Benjamin Mimar can't wait to see what comes next
In the world of pair skating, they’re still relatively kids. Especially, too, since they’ve spent just 10 months growing together as a team.
There’s plenty still left in the tank for Fiona Bombardier and Benjamin Mimar, to be sure. Many more months and years of exploring and building toward their full potential for the young Canadians to do.
Everyone has to start somewhere, though, and Bombardier and Mimar — who are based at the Toronto Lakeshore Skating Club — surely can count some successes to build on when they look back at the first season together.
“There were a lot of positives,” Andrew Evans, their primary coach at Toronto Lakeshore, said in the wake of their fourth-place finish at the recent 2025 Canadian national championships in Laval, Quebec. “They can be very proud of where they came from at the beginning of the season and where they ended up. I think they demonstrated a lot of elements that are world-level quality (he mentions throws and lifts as particular strengths). Overall, I think everyone in the camp was satisfied with the performances.”
The 24-year-old Mimar called their nationals debut together “awesome” and “a great experience. It went really well and we’re excited for next season.”
It’s a pairing that was birthed after 2024 nationals in Calgary, when both skaters found themselves without partners. Mimar’s run with Brooke McIntosh came to an end before those Canadian championhips; it was a partnership that had produced a Canadian junior title and bronze-medal finish at the 2022 world junior championships (they had been senior silver medallists at 2023 nationals in Oshawa, Ontario).
Bombardier, meanwhile, skated for one season with Gabriel Farand — it was her initial foray into pair skating after competing in women’s singles — but he retired at the end of that campaign. Soon enough, Evans and Bombardier’s then coach Bruno Marcotte pointed them toward each other.
“We were training at the same rink (in Oakville, Ontario), and both of our coaches started talking about me, about the possibility of trying (out) together,” said Mimar. “We tried, and it went really well. And we trained for what, a couple weeks, tried for a couple weeks …
“And then we made it official,” said the 20-year-old Bombardier, whose father Jean-Michel was a two-time Canadian pairs champion, in 1995 and 1996.
Soon enough, they knew that this was the right match for both of them.
“The elements started coming along, like, pretty quickly,” said the 20-year-old Bombardier. “That’s what the coaches were saying. We trust the coaches. And yeah, we were getting along. Well, we were already friends off the ice.”
Actually, the friendship group went a little further than that.
“Gab is my best friend, and he was skating with her,” Mimar said of Farand (they’re both from the Montreal area). “And when he stopped skating with her and I was single, I thought it was a possibility for me to skate with her.”
They wound up settling in at Toronto Lakeshore — Evans had coached Mimar from the time he was first paired with McIntosh — and soon enough he could see the contrasts that make the pairing work. And that goes beyond the height differential between the two (the 6-foot-4 Mimar is nearly a foot taller than his partner).
“From height to everything, it’s the contrast that is their biggest asset. Ben is one of the most analytical skaters I’ve ever worked with. One hundred per cent. He’s always watching videos and he’s always watching the technique and what they look like compared to everyone else, and where the trends of elements are going (in the world),” said Evans. “Very big on his elements, too. He’ll be sending me videos and saying ‘I think this or this needs to change.’ He has strong opinions on things, which is great.
“Whereas Fiona is the opposite. She’s a bubbly girl, she’s very happy go lucky, she’s very easy to work with. Conversely, for the physical side of things, Fiona is an absolute athlete. She is so athletic. With her athleticism, when sometimes elements would be missed, she can compensate and she’s pretty good at saving things.”
In the fall, Bombardier and Mimar’s coaching team expanded to include Josee Picard and Julie Marcotte in the Montreal suburb of Sainte-Julie. The duo had already been working with Marcotte as their choreographer, and she had created their two programs for the 2024-25 season: “Beautiful Things,” by Benson Boone was the music choice for the short, and music from the “La La Land” movie soundtrack for the long.
It’s a creative match that worked on a number of levels for both skaters.
“I find that Julie and I have really similar personalities, really outgoing,” said Bombardier. “So I really enjoy working with her for that. And I just really like her choreography.
Added Mimar: “She’s really invested in us, she’s seen the potential, and it’s good to have someone who believes in us.”
Their addition has also given the couple a more well-rounded coaching team.
“Their forte is the second side of it,” said Evans, a former Canadian junior champion in pairs himself who is now one of the country’s top technical coaches in the discipline. “The polish, the speed, the performance … that is what Julie and Josee do best, which is not my forte whatsoever.
“We’re all open to suggestions and we’re all willing to try things to see what works out the best, and I think it’s allowed the team to evolve. They were a natural part of that evolution. We were like ‘hey, technique is getting better, things are getting more consistent. Where’s the next low-hanging fruit where we can get more points?’ The fact they were going to see Julie, and Josee was in the same arena … Josee is who Josee is, and that’s what she does. It kind of evolved into that very organically.”
If that tandem sounds familiar … well, yes, it’s the same coaching duo that guided Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps (who at 41 and 34, have redefined longevity in pairs skating) to a gold-medal finish at the 2024 World Championships in Montreal. Their practice habits have become the stuff of legend over the years, and Bombardier and Mimar get to see that every time they’re in Sainte-Julie. It can’t be anything but helpful.
(there’s no set schedule to their visits, which are greatly dependant on Bombardier’s schooling. She attends classes at the University of Guelph).
“Being able to train around world champions, it’s good for them to see that. It puts things into perspective,” said Evans. “When you train around people at that level, it’s good to have role models but at the same time, you see the best in the world are going through the same things as you. It gives you the patience to know you’re on the right track.”
It wasn’t long after that change that Bombardier and Mimar began to soar a little higher. After winning Skate Ontario sectionals with a 162.08 score, Skate Canada gave the duo their first international opportunity — Warsaw Cup, a Challenger Series event in November.
“Around Warsaw, things really started to come together. I think it was honestly the new plan they had made with splitting the training time between the two places,” explained Evans. “They had combined a mutual goal, and finally something tangible was happening. For them, they were seeing the reward. They got to go and represent their country. It was ‘OK, the hard work we’re doing is paying off.’ They’re being recognized. I think it just brought them together as a team.”
And they seized the moment, earning a bronze medal with a 170.51 total. It was a number that surpassed the technical minimums needed for both the Four Continents and World Championships.
“It was a really cool experience,” Bombardier said in reflecting on the biggest highlight of their season. “We went in with no expectations for ourselves as a new team, and we just wanted to (skate) how we’ve been training, and do what we know.”
Achieving the minimum scores was the bonus on top of the medal.
“We had a goal to get our (minimum) technical score for Four Continents,” said Mimar. “And then we got the Four Continents and Worlds scores, and we felt good about that.”
It was also a moment for Bombardier to show her toughness. She’d injured her right hand falling on a throw triple loop the week before Warsaw, and the thought at the time was it was just a sprain. In the end, it turned out to be something a little more serious than that.
“They went and skated and awhile after coming back, she said ‘my wrist still kind of hurts.’ And she went and got X-rays and it turned out she had a fracture in one of the bones in her hand,” said Evans. “Like I said, Fiona’s pretty easy going. There was no drama. Her wrist hurts, she didn’t make a production out of it. She skated with a broken hand and didn’t say boo. Taped it up, kept a brace on it and they trained.
“Going into nationals, there were a couple of elements she couldn’t train all the time because of the position that the brace had her wrist in just a couple of weeks before. But those elements went well in the competition anyway.”
Warsaw also did wonders for the duo’s confidence. Evans said it’s something he noticed almost immediately after they came back to Toronto to resume their training at the Ford Performance Centre.
“Honestly, they came back from that competition — and I knew they had been working with Julie and Josee, so obviously things were better — but I was like ‘man, they seem more confident and more like a senior team.’ There’s something to say about that, about letting them have some exposure and building confidence off that.”
Bombardier and Mimar produced a similar score in Laval (170.63), and now they’re hungry to see just how much further they can grow in the seasons ahead. But they may not be quite done with this campaign, as they’re the first alternates for Four Continents in South Korea should an injury crop up among Canada’s three entries at that competition. It is sport, after all.
“We still have to train until March because we’re the only possible subs,” said Mimar. “We have the (technical) scores for both competitions, so we have to keep training. We don’t wish anyone (bad luck), but if we get the call, we have to be ready.”
Soon enough, it will be time to create new programs. And time for a new goal for a team that truly is just getting started.
“The goal for next season is, make sure to try to push the other teams for (2026) Olympics and if it doesn’t happen, well, we’re still really young,” said Mimar. “It’s a long shot run, it’s not a short-term partnership. We can do all the elements, and now it’s just to get better at skating them, chemistry, and then the scores will go up.”
Indeed, Evans says there is still work to do — he points toward side-by-side jumps and twists as two particular elements that need improvement — but there’s a good foundation in place for the future.
“Their consistency has been getting better and better through practice. By the end of the season, particularly around the time of Warsaw, everything (in training) was clean a lot of the time. Like, no mistakes,” he said. “They were getting the job done. Then, it was more about how are we getting the job done, how nice does it look now? That was the big thing from beginning to end. Elements have smoothed out considerably.
“For them, twists is the one that we’re going to have to keep working on and developing. Honestly, if you look at it from the beginning of the season to the end of the season, they’ve already taken strides. We’re all on the same page about it, which is nice. We’ve all watching the same videos and saying, that’s what we need to do, that’s the direction we need to go.
“It’s just about mileage at this point.”
And let’s not forget that Bombardier is still relatively new at this pairs thing. Laval marked the first time she devoted all of her energy to the discipline at nationals — she had competed in both a year ago in Calgary — and her comfort level with pairs elements continues to grow.
“I’m starting to feel a lot more comfortable on the ice having a partner, and I'm really enjoying that, not being by myself,” she said. “You don’t rely completely on the partner, but you have someone to bounce off. I really enjoy that.”
Even her mother, former Canadian champion Josee Chouinard, is cringing a little less when she watches her daughter reach for new heights in pairs.
“Mom gets a little nervous in the lifts when I’m way up there,” said Bombardier. “She likes the throws, actually, because she’s like, ‘oh, you used to jump high when you did singles, so it doesn't bug me, the throws.’ But she gets scared of the lifts and the twists.
“She is warming up to the fact (that I’m doing pairs) now because she sees how much I am enjoying it.”
As for how this will all play out down the road, Evans, for one, suggests Bombardier and Mimar are just scratching the surface of their potential. He’s seen “massive” improvements in their jumps this season already, with the opportunity to grow their technical base even more firmly.
“They’ll have all the elements quite strong, they’ll be technically quite strong. And then the second mark, it’s such a subjective thing,” he said. “I feel like even from the beginning of the season to the end of the season, the way they skated was better and they fell into a groove for how they skate their programs. Over the years, they’ll find the music that suits them the best and they’ll be able to gravitate toward that in important years.
“I think they can have a strong second mark, like the Italian team, Sara (Conti) and Nic (Macii, the silver medallists at the European Championships). They kind of were always there and able to do the tricks and just in the last few years, their second mark has been going up and up. I think that’s the kind of trajectory you can look for with Ben and Fiona. Get everything able to be done, and then just give them some time. You could be looking a team with the ability to medal at any international they went to.”
So nice, they’ll do it twice
It was well publicized that last month’s Canadians in Laval marked the return of the national championships to the province of Quebec for the first time since 1989, when i was held in the city of Chicoutimi.
Turns out the wait for another Canadians in la belle province won’t be nearly as long. We learned that earlier this week, when Skate Canada announced it is bringing its 2026 national championships — which will determine the team for the Milan-Cortina Olympics — to Gatineau, across the river from Ottawa. It will be held at the 4,080-seat Centre Slush Puppie, a facility that opened in August 2021 and also contains three smaller rinks that can used for practices.
It extends what appears to be a recent trend for Skate Canada’s marquee event, in which practice ice is available in the same venue as the competition arena (this was also true in Oshawa in 2023, Calgary in 2024 and Laval this year). Dates for the Gatineau nationals will be Jan. 5-11, a week earlier than usual due to the Olympics.
This week’s announcement also revealed that 2025 Skate Canada International is headed to Saskatoon, from Oct. 31-Nov. 2. It’s a return to the province of Saskatchewan for this event for the first time since 2017, when Regina was the host city. SCI was last held in Saskatoon in 2001.
An unfathomable loss
Now comes the hard part of this column …
For those who are regular visitors to this space, you’re well aware that the focus here is primarily on Canadian skating. It’s where I live, after all, and it’s the area of the sport that I have the most familiarity with, and have covered extensively for more than 30 years now at a variety of outlets.
But it doesn’t matter where you are on this planet when something like what happened in Washington, D.C., this week occurs. I speak, of course, of the tragic crash between an airliner and a military helicopter that killed all 67 people onboard. Some 14 of them were members of the figure skating community who were returning home from a development camp in Wichita, Kansas, that followed the U.S. Championships in the American heartland.
That group included skaters and coaches, most notably the 1994 world championship pair team of Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, who had earned that honour for their native Russia but had emigrated to the U.S. and were coaching at the Skating Club of Boston (their son, Maxim, who placed fourth at nationals, was not on the plane. He had left Wichita on Monday after the championships. Now he has to move forward without them).
These camps are part of the process of building the next generation of stars for a given nation. Skate Canada does them. And so do the Americans and others. Among the young skaters in Wichita were rising talents we might have seen someday at a Winter Olympics, be it in 2030 or beyond. And now, sadly, they will never get that chance — two from the Skating Club of Boston (Spencer Lane and Jinna Han) and University of Delaware Figure Skating Club (Sean Kay and Angela Yang), and three each from the Skating Club of Northern Virginia (Eddie Zhou, Brielle Beyer and Cory Haynos) and the Washington FSC (sisters Everly and Alydia Livingston, along with
Franco Aparicio).
(they’re all pictured in this tribute post from Golden Skate. Four coaches and 13 parents were also on American Eagle Flight 5342).
For U.S. Figure Skating, the terrible news on Thursday no doubt conjured up memories of the 1961 plane crash that killed the entire American team headed to the World Championships in Prague, which were cancelled in the wake of the tragedy. Some of those athletes were members of the Skating Club of Boston, which is the host club for this year’s World Championships in March. While that event will go on, the excitement that surrounded it in their community will now be tinged with some true sadness.
Like we said earlier, something this awful reverberates far beyond the American borders. A moment of silence was held in Estonia at the beginning of the European Championships in memory of the skaters who perished. We saw interviews on Canadian television on Thursday at clubs here in this country, with everyone trying to make sense of it all.
If you’ve been around the skating community for any amount of time, you learn quickly that it is a tightly knit family that crosses all borders. It is filled with lots of wonderful people, and many of them are hurting in some way this week. Trying to find the right words when none of them will really do.
Unfathomable. Tragic. And so utterly sad.