Canadians hope the key to winning is all in their heads
Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps have been working to hone mental focus
It has been 92 years since the world figure skating championships were last held in Montreal.
The undisputed star of that showcase was Norway’s Sonja Henie, who won the sixth of her 10 straight global titles without executing a single double rotation jump. She did, however, introduce skirts above the knee, which would make jumping easier for women, before moving on to become a Hollywood box-office sensation, her popularity surpassed only by Shirley Temple and Clark Gable.
The women’s bronze was claimed by Toronto’s Constance WilsonSamuel, the sister of Montgomery Wilson, who took the men’s silver.
Almost a century later, both men and women are tossing off quads, although with Russian skaters still banned it’s unlikely any female will attempt it at the Bell Centre.
Reigning world champion Kaori Sakamoto of Japan has been undefeated this season and is favoured to repeat. Any stumble would open the door for compatriot Mone Chiba and Belgium’s Loena Hendrickx, the latter fresh off her first European title. Among the men, Japan’s Shoma Uno is looking for a three-peat but strong challenges will come from American Ilia Malinin (the only skater to land a quadruple axel in competition), 2022 Olympic silver medallist Kagiyama Yuma, also from Japan, and France’s Adam Siao Him Fa.
Solid Canadian contenders for gold are the Montreal-based duo of Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps, ranked second in the world in the pairs, and ice dancers Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, six weeks removed from climbing atop the podium at the Four Continents competition.
Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps are up against defending champions Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara. The Japanese team — they train out of Oakville — missed the first half of this season because of her back injury, while the Canadians have been on an extraordinary roll for a duo featuring a 40-yearold who took a 16-year break.
The two-time national champions — Stellato-Dudek is American but is confident her Canadian citizenship will be granted before the next Olympics (it is not required for the world event) — got a practice preview of the Bell Centre recently, thrilled to be skating in the cavernous citadel of the Canadiens. Deschamps just had to take out his cellphone to snap a photo of himself on that sheet of ice, against the Canadiens logo, which will be removed when the figure skaters move in this week.
“I took a moment to just enjoy being there on the centre of the ice,” said Deschamps, who grew up in Vaudreuil-Dorion, 47 kilometres away, idolizing the Canadiens.
They will need to be laser-focused on their own job when the seniors competition begins Wednesday. Honing that crisp perspective has been enhanced, they believe, by the “brain-training” each has undertaken in the past year — a kind of Pavlovian neurofeedback program that uses sensors to monitor brain activity and regulate brainwave patterns.
Basically, you’re watching television but the TV shuts off when distraction is detected.
Stellato-Dudek discovered it in the Netflix documentary “Quarterback” about a football player who did brain-training that sharpened his focus over longer periods of time. Initially she thought it was a grand idea for Deschamps, who has often spoken about his attentiondeficit/hyperactivity disorder, which still causes acute restlessness and impulsiveness. She tracked down a neurofeedback provider in Montreal and sent Deschamps off.
“You are conditioning your brain to concentrate in different ways,” he said. “It is extremely hard to stay concentrated for five minutes. You don’t realize, but you just get better.”
“It’s extremely exhausting,” chimed in Stellato-Dudek, who followed her partner’s treatment cycle by booking her own round of appointments.
That whetting is now being applied to their skating programs, for which they have been training three hours a day on the ice, and 90 minutes in the gym afterward a couple of times a week. Of keenest focus were the jumps and throws in which they have made mistakes this season, whilst nevertheless sweeping Skate Canada and Cup of China, then taking bronze at the Grand Prix finals. Those errors were mostly in their singles elements.
“I’m just so sick of missing things I land every day, like 100 times, in practice,” Stellato-Dudek said. “I’m so sick of missing them exclusively in competition. So I just need to really chill out when I’m out there and not over-try.”
Gilles and Poirier, two-time world bronze medallists, are likewise taking a bead on gold and have made no bones about it.
“We have some big goals,” Poirier said. “We are looking to win this event. We want to be world champions.”
A year ago might have been their triumphant moment. They racked up gold in both of their Grand Prix events, and then copped the finals title. But the season went sideways when Gilles had to undergo surgery for ovarian cancer. They were unable to defend their national title, missing three months before returning for the 2023 worlds.
“Last year, it was just a fight to get through the world championships,” Gilles said.
Reigning champion Americans Madison Chock and Evan Bates, victors in the team event at the Beijing Olympics after the Russians were knocked back to bronze in the doping scandal that engulfed Kamila Valieva, will provide stiff competition. But the Canadians have never before felt this self-assured, this inspired.
“It’s going to be a really tough competition, but I think it’s really coming down to us bringing our best skating there, being confident in ourselves and not doubting ourselves,” Poirier said. “It’s a big goal, but we feel up to it.”
They’ve had six weeks to polish their programs since the Four Continents, making small adjustments to the short routine.
“Changing slightly the shape of the lift, adding arm movements to give the lift more of a wow factor,” Poirier said.
“On the whole, (we) just created an impression of strength and power and performance and command.”
The veterans made their worlds debut in 2013, when London, Ont., hosted the event,finishing 18th. They worked their way up to bronze in 2021. The field has arguably never been as competitive as it is right now with a number of elite teams vying for medals, including two sets of Canadian compatriots: Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Nikolaj Soerensen, and Marjorie Lajoie and Zachary Lagha.
“There were years when results felt a bit predictable and you could kind of know what was going to happen ahead of time,” Poirier said. “But this year I think it will be really exciting because there are so many teams that bring something so unique to the table. And we all have our strengths and our special things that we do that make us skaters and performers and artists.”