Worlds 2024: 'It was definitely worth the wait'
Four years after the event's cancellation left a trail of sadness and lost dreams, the sport's finest athletes finally gave Montreal a most memorable week of figure skating.
It was the simplest of queries, but a question that demanded to be asked, given the long and winding road it took to finally get figure skating’s biggest annual show to this great Canadian city.
“So, was the wait worth it?
“It was definitely worth the four-year wait,” Canadian pairs skater Trennt Michaud said with a contented smile after he’d skated his short program with partner Lia Pereira at the Bell Centre in Montreal — the city and the venue that was supposed to hold the World Figure Skating Championships back in 2020, only to have it scuttled by a global pandemic.
No doubt it was a sentiment also shared by ice dancers Piper Gilles, Paul Poirier, Majorie Lajoie and Zachary Lagha, the other four remaining members of the Canadian team from 2020 still active in the sport. A fortunate group of skaters who got a second chance at a once-in-a-lifetime experience (a phrase we heard quite frequently during our time in Montreal).
For every Canadian skater, it truly is a dream to skate in a World Championships on home soil. It last happened in 2013 in London, Ontario, a competition that Michaud and Maddie Schizas both attended as spectators, and found inspiration for their own skating ambitions. And now it’ll be 2030 or 2031 (at the earliest) before we see this event land in Canada again.
Once in a skating lifetime, indeed.
Reason enough to savour every second of what we witnessed at the Bell Centre. And oh, the things we saw. Record-breaking skates. Absolute brilliance at the top of every event. And a story for the ages, a tale that to me should truly stand as THE story of these championships.
With that in mind, some final thoughts from a magical week in Montreal …
Golden dreams really can come true
So what was your ‘moment’ of Montreal 2024? Perhaps it was the absolutely stunning display of quad power by the “Quad God,” Ilia Malinin of the United States, who reeled off six of the four-revolution jumps to leap onto the top of the podium in the men’s event (now THAT is how you close out the show). Or perhaps you’ll best remember how Japan’s Kaori Sakamoto roared back from a fourth-place finish in the short program to win her third straight women’s crown. Or maybe you loved the dramatic finish of the ice dance competition, which saw Americans Madison Chock and Evan Bates hold off the charge of Canadians Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier for the second straight world title.
Excellent choices, every one of them. But I’ve saved the best for last.
As I wrote back on the night it happened, I’ve seen many spectacular things in the five World Championships I’ve witnessed on Canadian soil. Right from the full buildings every night in Edmonton in 1996, to Jamie Sale and David Pelletier’s triumph in Vancouver in 2001, all the way through to Patrick Chan’s third straight World title for Canada in London in 2013 (there was an also a stop in Calgary in 2006, in the wake of the Turin Olympics).
But if this is the last Worlds I ever see in Canada, well, it just gave me one of the best stories of my sports reporting lifetime. It was five years ago that Deanna Stellato-Dudek, then 35 years old, moved from the United States to Montreal to join forces with Maxime Deschamps, who had spent years searching for just the right partner, wondering if it would ever happen.
“Of course, I had a lot of lows. I thought about stopping multiple times. But that passion and dream that I had just kept me going,” Deschamps recalled in an excellent piece earlier this week about the golden duo by Paula Nichols on olympic.ca. “Meeting Deanna was just so great. The freedom that I felt with her just made us be able to do what we do right now.”
And what they did in Montreal was nothing short of remarkable. First came the short program they had been looking for all season, which propelled them into the lead in the pairs event. Then, with an entire building wanting for them and the pressure at its peak, Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps lit up the Bell Centre with the skate of a lifetime that made them World champions.
In three words, Stellato-Dudek summed up a magical night: '“Oh my God!”
It’s such a compelling story, and I just can’t help thinking that. The 40-year-old woman who is such an inspiration to older athletes and, well, just anyone, who came back after a 16-year absence from the sport to do … this. And the 32-year-old Montrealer who kept showing that he was not only just the right partner for her, but a very good pairs skater in his own right. Both of them with the fire blazing inside to achieve a dream that neither would ever let die.
“I remember we had a discussion after our tryout, and I could tell that his hunger to win and to succeed was the same as mine,” Stellato-Dudek told olympic.ca. “And that sometimes is almost more important than the talent. But luckily Maxime also had the talent, too.”
It seems like the kind of story that only Hollywood can come up with — and Deschamps suggested as much after their triumph — but this one was real and it was spectacular (there’s that line again). And now they have every reason to think they can extend this magical ride all the way to the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy, where they surely can contend for gold. After what we saw this week in Montreal, who wants to tell them they can’t?
Although there is one little issue they need to clear up before then …
Canada has a singles problem
If you’ve been a follower of this space for the past nine months (and thanks so much if you have), you’ve no doubt noticed the stories and columns about pairs and ice dance have been a rather dominant theme. And it carried all the way through to Montreal, where Canada’s only two medals came in pairs and ice dance (the spectacular silver earned by Gilles and Poirier). But the story was nowhere near as positive in the individual disciplines.
Indeed, Canada’s aspirations in the men’s and women’s events were of a much, much more modest variety. As in, let’s keep (or gain) as many spots as possible for 2025 Worlds in Boston, the event that will determine the allocation of entries for the Winter Games in Milan-Cortina. But even that goal proved to tell too tall a task for the Canadian crew in Montreal.
Let’s start with the women’s event, where Maddie Schizas came to Montreal believing she had the ability to produce a top 10 finish, which would have earned Canada a second berth in Boston. As we’ve previously detailed here, Schizas spent an entire off-season changing her ways, enlisting new choreographers and crafting a new look that would help her improve on the 12th and 13th place finishes she admitted she was tired of seeing.
Instead, she couldn’t eliminate the costly mistakes when it counted and slid all the way to an 18th place result, which sent her back home to Ontario with plenty to ponder before she attacks a new season.
The men’s event, simply put, was a disaster for Canada. New national champion Wesley Chiu and 2020 Canadian titleist Roman Sadovsky came to Montreal with the chore of maintaining two spots for the country in 2025. And while that looked somewhat possible after the short program, both faltered badly in the long. Chiu finished 17th and Sadovsky 19th, far from the combined placement needed (28) to retain the spots. So instead, whoever ends up representing Canada in Boston will have the unenviable task of needing a top 10 finish to secure two spots for the Olympics. Let’s just say the glory days of Chan, Elvis Stojko, Kurt Browning and the rest of that lineage of greatness are just a memory now.
Only at Worlds, you say?
One of the really cool things about being at a World Championships is the people you get to cross paths with, some of whom you haven’t seen in years and when you do, it jogs a certain special memory (the kind of thing that happens when you decide to wander the arena concourse as much as I did).
There was the day someone asked me if I could take a picture for him, and I turned around and saw the aforementioned David Pelletier, who was always a fun guy to interview and just chat with (he’s now the power skating coach for the NHL’s Edmonton Oilers), and his wife, the legendary Katia Gordeeva. There were also Elvis sightings and Chan sightings, and the opportunity to spend some time catching up with Joannie Rochette, one of my all-time favourite people in this sport (and just generally a lovely human being), who I haven’t seen in at least a decade (Rochette and Chan were official ambassadors for the event). Stay tuned here for some details on that little chat.
But the coolest moment had to be this one. If you read this story, you know that Donald Jackson, the 1962 World champion, and his lovely wife Barb are friends of mine going back to my days in Ottawa. Hadn’t seen them in several years, either, and I happen to bump into them in front of (appropriately enough) the Jackson Ultima skating booth. In the middle of our conversation, a tall fellow came up to Don, shook his hand, expressed his pleasure at meeting him and said “Karol Divin was my coach.”
Now, if you know your figure skating history, Divin was the skater from the country then known as Czechoslovakia who held the lead heading into the free skate at 1962 Worlds in Prague, with Jackson needing to outskate him for the gold (which led to the famous line from his coach Sheldon Galbraith: “There is room at the top, Don”). Jackson would unleash the first triple Lutz in figure skating history as part of a brilliant skate that made him World champion. And he and Divin would go on to become good friends, staying in touch until Divin passed away a few years ago.
Needless to say, the mere mention of his Czech rival made Jackson beam. The man who wanted to meet him? That would be Rudolf Brezina, the father of former European and World junior medalist Michal, who is now retired (his younger sister, Eliska Brezinova, was in the women’s field in Montreal and shared that her brother was mentored by Divin at one time).
Just one of those fun meet-ups you encounter at a World Championships.
The Bell (Centre) tolls for figure skating
If you’re like me, you probably saw all the predictions that these Worlds were going to be a disaster attendance wise, that there would be empty seats by the thousands in the biggest arena in Canada (the ticket prices were considered by some to be on the very high side). But it simply wasn’t the case.
While it took a few days for the numbers to build through the week, by Saturday night the arena was sold out for the drama of the men’s free skate final. Both the lower bowl and second level were jammed with spectators (not including obstructed view seats) — tickets were not sold for the upper level — and it had to have been a validating sight for both the International Skating Union, which returned Worlds to Canada four years after the pandemic postponement, and Skate Canada, which chose this venue and this city to stage skating’s most important annual event. And it worked.
For most folks, the Bell Centre will always be associated first and foremost with the city’s beloved Montreal Canadiens (as it should be). But for the better part of the week, figure skating took over the home of the Habs and lit it up. And I’d say it did itself proud with the show it presented.
Merci, Montreal!
When this little sliver of the Substack world was first conceived about nine months ago, it was done with one big thought in mind — I’ve got to find a way to get to Montreal. To get back to the World Championships for the first time since 2013, and to tell some of the amazing stories that were sure to transpire there. And just to feel the buzz around this big-time event.
Mission accomplished on all fronts, I would say.
But it was about much more than skating. I have often said and thought that one of my great regrets about my nearly two decades living in the Ottawa area is that I didn’t spend enough time in Montreal. It truly is a fabulous and unique Canadian city, with a lovely blend of the French and English cultures that are woven into the fabric of our country. And it is a city filled with warm and welcoming people, at least if my experience is any indication.
Whether it was in restaurants or coffee shops or in the hallways and elevators of the Bell Centre (there’s an awful lot of that when your media home for the week is on the seventh floor of the building), smiling faces greeted you at every turn, always eager to make your day a little bit brighter. It made for a wonderful six days in this lovely city, and a World Championships experience that will linger in this writer’s memory for years to come.
So, was it worth it wait? Hell, yeah, it absolutely most definitely was.