Another SPIN
After retiring from skating at 17, Deanna Stellato-Dudek scored a record-breaking win last month, at 40. She reflects on her mid-life career shift and what it takes to keep up with the teenagers
In late March, Deanna Stellato-Dudek became the oldest figure skater to win a world title. At age 40, skating pairs for Canada with Maxime Deschamps, she won at the ISU World Championships in Montreal.
Perhaps more remarkably, she accomplished this feat after retiring from the sport at age 17 and spending 16 years working off-ice before making her return to the rink.
“I did it with reckless abandon,” said Stellato-Dudek over video call from Japan where she and Deschamps were performing in the Stars on Ice tour. “Whether I succeeded or failed, when I’m 80 I could say, ‘I have no regrets.’ ”
Originally from the outskirts of Chicago, Stellato-Dudek won the 1999 ISU junior Grand Prix finals and the 2000 junior U.S. nationals as a singles figure skater. Then, she said, she just stopped.
“I had a nagging injury and it just wouldn’t go away. In my 17-year-old brain I thought, I guess I can’t do this anymore, so I will go be normal. Go back to school and live a normal life.”
She was happy enough in that life, and enjoyed her job running the esthetics department for a plastic surgeon, “beauty guru stuff,” she said. “But the passion I have for skating is so much greater than I felt about the beauty industry.”
Remarkably, she didn’t lace up her skates once in those 16 years. “The universe kept giving me signs,” Stellato-Dudek said. She’d come across ice rinks in unlikely places, figure skater stickers on street signs. “I ignored all of them.”
Then one day at a professional retreat, she picked up a game card that asked the question: What would you do if you couldn’t fail? She blurted out, “Win the Olympic gold medal.” That was it. She set out to do exactly that.
Here’s where that reckless abandon came into play.
“I knew I would have to make a real leap, do this 110 per cent,” she said. It eventually involved moving to Canada, to partner with Deschamps in 2019. Stellato-Dudek is in the process of applying for Canadian citizenship and is hoping it will be complete by 2026, so the pair can continue their domination of the category at the Winter Olympics, skating for Canada.
Stellato-Dudek feels there are advantages to skating at this stage of life, chief among them mental toughness. “When you are older, you hope, you are smarter, wiser and you realize the negative outcomes that can happen,” she said. “You troubleshoot more as an adult; as a kid you just try stuff.”
Like, for instance, perilous overhead lifts, throws and jumps.
“I realized I was going to have fear going into certain elements,” she said. “I read a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt; she said to do something every day that scares you. Well, I was literally doing something scary every day as I was learning pairs skating.”
Stellato-Dudek made the decision not to allow any space for fear in her mind.
“Every cell in my brain was thinking about the technical process to get the job done.”
Figure skating also has an artistic aspect, and age has clear benefits here.
“To be a woman, to bring life experience of love and loss to the ice is a huge advantage compared to the 18- or 19-year-olds,” said StellatoDudek, who got married in 2013. When you have lived through those things, “it is easier to portray it on the ice.”
Physically, though, she trains much harder and longer than most younger skaters, to keep up. On training days, she gets to the ice an hour before going on the rink, and warms herself up. She and Deschamps, who is 32, work on their pairs elements off-ice first. Then they skate for three hours: in the summer they develop new moves and routines; during the season they do intensive run-throughs. That is followed by an hour in the gym together. Then, an important step: “My cool-down process is close to three hours long, in order to prepare my body for the next day’s load.”
At home, she focuses on fuelling her body with proper nutrition and hydration — as someone who is lifted overhead, she also has to maintain the same exact weight — plus further intense stretching.
“All of that is encompassed in the kind of grit you have to have to do this through the 2026 Olympics,” she said. “As an older athlete, I have to be even more committed than my teenage counterparts. I owe it to myself, on the second chance on this dream, and I owe it to my partner to be ready to go each day.”
Athletes have begun pushing the
Athletes have begun pushing the age boundaries in sport more and more, often retiring and returning multiple times
age boundaries in sport more and more, often retiring and returning multiple times. Tom Brady famous- ly stepped off the football field for good at 45. Stellato-Dudek was par- ticularly inspired by UFC fighter Randy Couture, who retired at 47, and boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr., who retired at 41.
“I thought, if they are out there getting beat up at that age, I can skate.”
She also cites Serena Williams’ re- turn to tennis after motherhood, playing until she was 40. These are game-changing athletes, exceeding our expectations, and she has joined their ranks.
“I’m honoured to be one of those people.”
Mustering the courage to make a huge mid-career shift, pushing the edge physically and mentally, has to come from true passion, and Stella- to-Dudek has it.
“I can’t wait to get on the ice every day,” she said.
Still, she was tested in the lead-up to the world championships in Montreal.
“It was intense pressure that we had been building up to for so long. To skate where Maxime was born, I really wanted to step up. But the cheering from the crowd helped so much. It really lifted us up.”
The rest of us watching felt it too.