Olympic dream on the horizon for history-making pair

SASKATOON — Two years ago, Canada’s pairs figure skating champions Deana Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps claimed their first Skate Canada International title, kick-starting a glorious season that culminated with world championship gold.

It was an historic win for Stellato-Dudek who, at 40, entered the sport’s record book as the oldest woman to win a world figure skating title.

This season, at 42, the tenacious athlete is poised to make Olympic history at the Milan-Cortina Winter Games in February.

“I’m really excited about it. It was something I wanted when I was young and I thought it was gone,” said the now three-time Canadian champion following their first 2025 Skate Canada practice.

“Re-igniting the Olympic dream in 2016 and 10 years later to actually be achieving it, at 42, when I had people pass up skating with me (as a pair) because they never thought I would last to 38 — let alone until I was 42, it gives me a lot of personal pleasure to shove that in their face. It also gives me a lot of pleasure to know I was finally able to achieve this dream.

“I always joke with Maxime: we need to stay healthy, uninjured and alive and we’re going (to the Games),” said the former U.S. team member who got her Canadian citizenship last December and, with that, eligibility to compete for Canada at the Games.

Now, just past the 100-day countdown mark, the pair’s campaign to stand on the Olympic podium resumes this weekend at SaskTel Place where Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps could pocket their third consecutive Skate Canada gold.

Combined with the silver they won two weeks ago at the ISU Grand Prix opener in France, a win at this third of six events in the series would guarantee them a spot in the exclusive Grand Prix Final where the top-six points-getters on the circuit — the de facto Olympic medal favourites — face off one last time before the Games.

The Canadians’ main rivals this weekend promise to be Germans Minerva Hase and Nikita Volodin who, after just two seasons together, are the reigning Grand Prix and European champions and world silver medallists.

“She’s an impressive woman for coming back after such a long time,” Hase said of her Canadian counterpart.

“It’s just crazy how determined she is and how hardworking she is to get where she is now and still be fighting. Huge respect for that. I think I will not skate that long,” Hase said, smiling.

It’s not lost on Stellato-Dudek that the Germans were one-year-olds when she made her debut at Skate Canada 25 years ago.

In 2000, the Chicago native was a 17-year-old competing in the women’s event at Skate Canada in Mississauga, Ont., months after winning silver at the world juniors. She finished fifth in her senior competition debut.

Mere months later, Stellato-Dudek retired, plagued by persistent hip injuries. Her Olympic dream dissolved — or, so she thought.

She started a career as an aesthetician and got married. Sixteen years later, thoughts of winning Olympic gold serendipitously resurfaced at a work retreat, sparking Stellato-Dudek’s ambition to give elite figure skating competition another shot. She re-invented herself as a pair skater.

When her American partner’s future in the sport was in doubt due to injury, Stellato-Dudek found a new match in Canada. In 2019, she became Deschamps’s ninth pair partner and the rest, as they say, is history.

“I saw her fire right away and the potential we had together. Anything I was going to do with her was a bonus because I was about to stop skating,” said Deschamps, 33.

Given her passion for breaking barriers, this season Stellato-Dudek is turning heads for reasons other than her age.

After the ISU lifted its rule banning back flips from competitive programs, most people assumed that some singles skaters, primarily the men, would include the acrobatic move in their programs. Stellato-Dudek had another idea.

At a tune-up competition earlier this fall, she and Deschamps performed the first assisted back flip at the mid-way point of the footwork sequence in their fiery Carmina Burana short program. Deschamps cups his hands under his partner’s skate boot and propels her upward into the aerial summersault.

The pair showed off the flip in Thursday’s practice much to the delight of the hundreds of school children present.

“The biggest compliments we’re getting, ironically, is from other athletes. They think it’s super cool. I think they like this new direction for the sport,” said Stellato-Dudek, who was also a gymnast in her youth.

“I feel it’s just good for the younger generation of girls to see that a woman can do the back flip because, currently, only Ilia (Malinin) and Adam (Siao Him Fa) are doing it. I feel it’s a positive direction for the sport to move into.”

The pairs compete their short program Friday. The pairs final goes Saturday.