Strutting their stuff in Saskatoon

SASKATOON — Figure skating fans banking on home team wins at Skate Canada International this weekend would be wise to throw their support behind 2024 world pairs champions Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps and twice world silver medallist ice dancers Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier.

The 2026 Olympic medal hopefuls come in to this third of six ISU Grand Prix events as the defending Skate Canada champions and the Canadian team’s best bets to mine gold.

Fans who enjoy a side of compelling subplots with their sports drama will want to pay close attention to Canada’s top seeds in men’s and women’s events where intense rivalries for Olympic team membership are unfolding.

With just a lone Olympic berth up for grabs in each of the singles disciplines, Canadian athletes are looking to bolster their credentials every time out.

Roman Sadovsky, the reigning Canadian champ, and a resurgent Stephen Gogolev have already met twice this season, taking turns at the top of the podium in ISU Challenger series competition.

On the women’s side, three-time national titleholder Madeline Schizas has had an up-and-down start to her season, while perennial challenger Sara-Maude Dupuis boosted her Olympic campaign with a high-scoring triple Axel — a jump very few women in the world have mastered.

“Every competition prior to an Olympics is important,” said Gogolev’s coach, Lee Barkell, who also coaches Winnipeg’s ascending pair Ava Kemp and Yohnatan Elizarov in Toronto.

“You’re always going to be checking to see the athletes’ readiness and it’s an opportunity to see them perform under pressure, if they transfer what they’re doing on a consistent basis in practice to the competition stage.”

Considering the impressive resumés of the medal favourites from Japan, the U.S., Italy and France, Canada’s singles skaters will be hard-pressed to land on the podium at SaskTel Place — although any of the four could surprise given the sport’s inherently slippery field of play.

The world’s figure skating elite each compete in two Grand Prix events with the six top-ranked competitors in each discipline facing off at the Final in December. This season’s installment in Nagoya, Japan, will set the stage for sport’s biggest show in Milan-Cortina in February.

Sixty athletes from 15 countries are entered here, including the phenomenal American Ilia Malinin — the twice world champion who’s back to defend his Skate Canada title.

The self-dubbed “quadgod” — the only man ever to execute a quadruple Axel — obliterated the competition two weeks ago at the Grand Prix series opener in France, winning by 40 points.

“I’ll be honest. Of all the years I’ve been involved in skating, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so dominant,” Barkell said.

“His technical ability is in a field of its own so, in my opinion, it (the Olympic title) is his to lose.”

Every Olympic season, one young athlete seems to come out of nowhere to make a run for Olympic gold. Japan’s Ami Nakai, 17, signalled she could be that formerly unheralded spoiler this time after shocking the women’s field in France. The jaw-dropping score Nakai earned in her senior competition debut would have won the world championship last season.

The world will be watching to see if she can do it again in Saskatoon.

For Canadian athletes, Skate Canada offers a unique opportunity to become attuned to performing for a home crowd. Acclimatizing to the pressure-packed environment and boisterous atmosphere is valuable preparation for the national championships in January when Olympic team selections are decided.

“It (Skate Canada) is a pretty big trial run,” Barkell said. “Obviously, everyone wants to skate well, make their mark and come out of it feeling confident.”

That’s exactly what Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps are looking for after enduring an error-plagued free skate at Grand Prix de France. They settled for silver, more than 20 points back of the Japanese world champions.

With just a week of training time to work out the kinks, the Canadians’ bid to secure a Skate Canada threepeat and punch their ticket to the Grand Final won’t be a cakewalk — not with Germany’s world silver medallists Minerva Hase and Nikita Volodin in the lineup.

Gilles and Poirier have yet to compete this season, but on paper they are the class of the ice dance field in Saskatoon. Assuming they can shake off any season-debut jitters, a sixth Skate Canada title should be theirs.

The 51st edition of Skate Canada International kicks off Friday with the pairs short program and wraps up Sunday with the ice dance final. A total of US$180,000 in prize money is up for grabs.