Worlds 2024: 'Maybe it needed to happen'
Maddie Schizas used a nightmare long program at the Canadian Championships as fuel to put herself in precisely the right place to take on the planet's best in Montreal.
Maddie Schizas still fondly remembers her first experience at a World Figure Skating Championships in Canada. The year was 2013 and a then 10-year-old Schizas, who’s from Oakville, Ontario, made her way down Highway 401 with some friends (and adults driving the vehicle, of course) to London to catch some of the women’s practices at Budweiser Gardens that week.
The stars of the show were South Korea’s Yuna Kim, who would go on to win that World title, Japan’s dynamic Mao Asada and the ever graceful Carolina Kostner of Italy. And Schizas got to see them all and soak up their aura.
“It was just electric. I was pretty young, but I still remember it. I still remember watching it. It was a very special experience,” said Schizas, now 21 and a veteran of three World Championships herself. “I’m glad (Worlds) is coming back to Canada, because I think a whole new generation of kids is going to get to experience how motivating and how inspiring it was to watch a World Championships in Canada.
“I remember watching the top group of women practice. Yuna, Mao and Carolina were all there, and we came to watch practice sessions. We were watching them warm up and watching them skate. It was a really formative experience in many ways, getting to see that … It was really amazing watching the top female skaters in the world. I was probably just starting to (skate) at a competitive level. I think I was at a pre-juvenile level or something like that. But I was old enough to appreciate it.”
In less than two weeks’ time, it’ll be Schizas in that same spotlight when 2024 Worlds arrives at the Bell Centre in Montreal (you may have seen her on the some of the posters promoting the event). She and the rest of the team that will represent Canada at the event got a chance to test drive the ice at the cavernous venue earlier this week, and it no doubt got the juices flowing inside all of them about what is to come.
“I was so excited. It was really cool being at the Bell Centre,” said Schizas. “My family is from Montreal. We’re all Habs (Montreal Canadiens, a legendary hockey franchise) fans, so it’s pretty cool.”
In a perfect world, Schizas would be rolling into Worlds as a three-time Canadian champion. But a not-so-funny thing happened to her on the road to the Bell Centre. Back in January in bone-chilling cold Calgary, she won the short program, but the free skate was a disaster, to say the least, which opened the door for Kaiya Ruiter to win her first Canadian title. Schizas walked into the media mixed zone afterward with a look of utter shock on her face, unable to put into words exactly why she thought that meltdown had occurred (this quote probably summed up her feelings best at the time, harsh as it was: “It was a waste of everyone’s time, including mine”).
She’s had plenty of time to reflect on it since, and has a better handle now on what happened during that nightmare of a day.
“I think what happened is I never really got revved up. Normally, I get quite nervous to compete, which sort of works for me. I felt like in Calgary, I was really, really calm the whole time. I walked out there, I felt really calm, and then I calmly walked through the program, and walked through some of my jumps,” she explained. “That’s what I think the issue really was. I’ve learned a little bit since then about needing to be revved up, and I’ve practised it. Even in our simulation days and stuff, I’ve really gotten myself excited and a little bit nervous to go out there. It’s led to some very consistent and repeatable performances.”
That calm feeling is something she openly talked in Calgary about wanting to embrace, but clearly she’s now learned that isn’t the route to success for her.
“It was a fun in a way being calm, because nobody really likes feeling nervous,” she said in looking back. “That excited feeling isn’t always comfortable, but it helps me skate better.”
Schizas admits now that the result in Calgary had her concerned that she might have put her place on the World team in jeopardy. She even carried some of those thoughts with her to the Four Continents Championships in Shanghai a few weeks later.
“You know what, I did. Mostly because I think you never get to assume anything. Even going into Calgary, I wasn’t saying ‘when I’m at Worlds’ because you just don’t know. You just don’t know what’s going to happen and how the selection meetings are going to go,” she said. “I never like to assume. I remember at Four Continents saying ‘if I’m assigned to Worlds …’ and everybody was making fun of me after I skated because I gave that quote and they were like ‘of course you’re going to Worlds.’ And I was like, well, you can’t assume. Until I actually get the email in my inbox with my assignment form, I would rather not assume anything.”
Understand that Schizas felt this way knowing full well she was the only Canadian women’s skater to have the technical minimum scores required for Worlds in both programs (“there were still events for other people to go get them”). And when Skate Canada assigned Ruiter to the World Junior Championships in Taipei City (where she finished 21st), that was also a clear sign they considered what happened in Calgary to be an outlier of a performance. Schizas rewarded their faith at Four Continents, turning in one of her best long programs of the season en route to a sixth-place finish. And that’s when she started to breathe easier about that World team berth.
“I thought the result at Four Continents really solidified that I was the right person to go because Canadians wasn’t good,” she said. “I’m sure that cast doubt with many people about my ability to lay it down when it really counted.
“Yeah, (that long program) felt really good. I definitely felt like there were still things to improve on from that. It was good, but I felt like I could have done better, for sure. There was still stuff to pick apart. But it was definitely satisfying. At Canadians, I definitely did not expect that free skate to go the way it did. I was better prepared than that. So showing up at Four Continents, I felt pretty confident. I had skated well all week and so I walked into that free skate really knowing that I could lay it down. I wasn’t really surprised that it went well. There’s been times where I have been quite surprised for things to go as well as they have. But that was not one of them.”
All of this is remindful, at least to this scribe, of this thought that her coach, Nancy Lemaire, put out there after the meltdown in Calgary: “This could be the fire that sets up the second half of the season to be great, because now she’s going to go home and be ‘I’m not doing that again. That felt terrible.’” When that comment is relayed to Schizas now, she says that’s pretty much how things went down in the lead-up to Four Continents.
“I definitely buckled down. I skated more hours for sure after Canadians. I started skating a 7 to 9 (session) in the morning — I skated at the Hamilton Skating Club before class (at McMaster University) — and then again from 12 to 3 or 12 to 4. So I added that morning session for awhile there,” said Schizas, who is based at the Milton Skating Club. “I think that it just helped me get on track, for sure. It definitely prompted me to work really hard. Maybe it needed to happen, maybe I needed that reminder. It’s not that I wasn’t working hard before, because I obviously was, but it definitely prompted me to buckle down and put in the run-throughs and the work the last few weeks before Four Continents, and now the last few weeks before Worlds so I’m really ready.”
In a symbolic flushing of that bad long program memory from Calgary, Schizas also showed up in Shanghai with a new costume.
“I had kind of wanted one before Canadians. I was kind of thinking maybe I wanted a new dress, and then Canadians didn’t go so well and I decided I was definitely getting a new dress,” she said. “I was like ‘it’s got bad vibes,’ and Piper (Gilles) says ‘you could just wash the dress, that would make you feel better.’ And I was like ‘no, no, I want a new one.’ So I got a new one before Four Continents.”
So it is now that Schizas will show up in Montreal both looking good and feeling good. She spent the entire summer determined to approach this season in a new way, enlisting two new sets of choreographers to present a new Maddie to the skating world. Most of all, she wanted to make a move upward at Worlds, where she had grown weary of the 12th and 13th places finishes of the past. But when she looks back at things like her brilliant free skate at Skate Canada International back in October (which earned a huge personal best score of 132.47), she can see a top 10 finish as a real possibility.
“I really hope so. I really hope I can turn it into a 10th,” she said. “I know I have the scoring potential to do it. If you look at my highest scores for the season, it adds up to a score of around 200 points, and that would be enough for top 10 (last year in Saitama, the 10th place score was 192.81. Her total was 187.49). I just have to get it done when it counts.”
And she knows full well female skaters around Canada will be cheering her on in that regard. If Schizas winds up in the top 10, she’ll earn a second spot for the country at 2025 Worlds in Boston.
“For sure, for sure. There’s definitely (other) people who want to go to Worlds, and a second spot would allow someone else to go,” she said. “But it also can take the pressure off yourself — you never know how your season is going to run. It’s a favour to your future self.”
The cheers that will matter the most, though, will be those coming from the people she’s closest to: her parents, Linda Nazareth and Lou Schizas, are both from Montreal and both sides of the family will be well represented at the Bell Centre. It’ll be a bit of homecoming for one and all.
“My mom bought a box for the short program. So I think I have like 15 family members coming for that. They’re still working it out, so we’re going to see,” she said. “I have family coming from Toronto, I have family coming from Montreal. So I’m excited for it.”
Terrific interview.