Senior Canadian Nationals starts tomorrow (Friday, January 17), and I figure I should try to be interested since they’re going to be our 51st state and all.
I know this is a niche competition in an already niche newsletter. I know some of you are only interested if there’s an American Woman involved. To which I say… Deanna Stellato WAS an American Woman. And, actually, so was Piper Gilles. But I will not be offended if you take a pass on this one.
And for those of you who actually are big Canada fans, please feel free to storm the comments and tell me everything I got wrong or missed. I don’t pretend to be an expert in general, but especially not on the subject of Canadian skating.
Men
The Canadian Men are, to put it kindly, in a re-building era. The shadow of Patrick Chan (and, to a lesser but not insignificant extent, Keegan Messing) looms large. Sure, there’s some potential and even some dark horses. But the “top” Canadian men all seem determined to hide from the podium. It’s like they all have stage fright.
Right off the bat, two of the name brand Canadian Men withdrew from Nationals: Wesley Chiu and Stephen Gogolev. Neither one stormed the castle during the Grand Prix season, but they tend to have potential to be decent. (Not exactly a ringing endorsement, is it?)
That pretty much leaves Roman Sadovsky as the lone skater with a remotely significant international profile. Poor Roman. Such potential, such Charlie-Brown-kicking-the-football. He doesn’t inspire much confidence with his inconsistency and constant bad luck (injuries, skates getting lost during flights, etc). I’d like to see him have a lights-out performance here and really turn things around in the run up to the Olympic season, but we’ve been burned by him before.
All that said, I would keep an eye on Anthony Paradis and Aleksa Rakic.
I badly want Anthony Paradis to emerge as a break out star because he’s a delightful little weirdo who was skating in frilly vampire blood stain blouses well before Ilia Malinin. His ISU bio lists his hobbies as, “Being a fashion ICON” and “slaying all day everyday.” He gives me shades of Johnny Weir, and we’re really missing that energy in the men’s event right now.
Since Anthony is skating as a junior internationally right now, Aleksa Rakic might be the safer bet for Canadian gold. Aleksa seems to be fairly stable, but his ISU hobbies are just, “reading, biking, drawing, listening to music,” so you can see why he is less interesting to me.
Honestly, Keegan Messing has to be up there in Alaska pondering if he should make a run for the Milan Olympics just because it would be fun to go to a Games that is not on Covid lockdown and equally fun to compete in the Team Event, which he missed last time because of said pandemic. I don’t think he needs a single quad jump. He just needs to land on his feet to be the Canadian Man. And he can do legal backflips now.
Pairs
Deanna Stellato, fanning her fresh Canadian passport like a stack of money, is the star here. Well, she’s the star alongside her partner Max, but who are we kidding. As reigning World Champs, they seem likely to win.
The other podium finishers are likely to be Pereira/Michaud and Laurin/Ethier, who I honestly cannot tell apart except one of them has too many Ns in his name. HOWEVER, I’m watching Fiona Bombarider/Benjamin Mimar to play spoiler. Fiona was an up-and-coming singles skater a couple of years ago when she switched to Pairs. I don’t know much about her singles career, but Reddit seems to think the switch to Pairs was savvy because she didn’t have a solid triple-triple.
Women
Last year, Maddie Schizas finished second at CanNats and famously told the press that her performance was, “..a waste of everyone’s time including mine.”
Confession: I actually love Maddie Schizas. She’s often candid with the press (see above), and she can serve a bitch face on ice when she wants to (also see above). There’s some polite, Canadian version of Ashely Wagner lurking in her. This season, she’s skating to The Lion King soundtrack despite some how never seeing it (I think she may have seen the stage show by now, but she started this season with no actual lived experience). She’s been chasing the high of her Olympic Team Event performance since 2022, but she hasn’t quite returned to that peak. For years, she’s been The Canadian Woman because she was the only one with the international scores high enough to go to Worlds, but that’s changed this year. Her position is not assured. I’m hoping some competition in her backyard will nudge her back into fighting form.
Other Canadian Women with tech scores that make them eligible for Worlds:
Katherine Medland-Spence- Had one international event this season, Warsaw Cup, which she won. Second highest international score for a Canadian Woman this season (Maddie has the highest).
Sara-Maude Dupuis- I know very little about her other than Ashley Wagner really loves her name.
Uliana Shiryaeva- Canada’s very own secret Russian. Moved from Russia to Canada a couple of years ago. Supposedly, her parents moved to Canada independently of her skating career and just wanted her to be able to continue to skate.
Kaiya Ruiter- Last year’s Canadian champ. Did not waste anyone’s time, especially her own.
Ice Dance
Piper and Paul seem poised to dominate here, though it’s not really a guarantee as evidenced by their Grand Prix Final results. One fall on the wrong element could put them behind Marjorie and Zach again. Honestly, the competition between these two teams should be much closer, and it shouldn’t take a fall to make that happen. Both teams are really well packaged this year with a set of great programs; I hope they make it interesting for each other. And I hope Piper and Paul wear the red-and-white Barbie costumes because now is the time to wear the Canadian flag as your costume, if ever there was a time.
The real story here is the bronze medal. Lauriault/Le Gac, the campy ones, seemed to have #3 Canadian team locked down, but they’ve been neck and neck all season with Fabbri/Ayer. With Canada likely to have three spots at the 2026 Olympics and with Ice Dance being a sport that favors momentum, this could be the real fight.
If you want to watch live, So You Want to Watch Figure Skating has the details.
Three Non-Figure Skating Things: Audiobooks Edition!
About half the books I read every year are audiobooks, so I have strong opinions. The narrator is everything. Three recent good ones:
Be Ready When the Luck Happens, written and narrated by Ina Garten. I know about Ina Garten the same way I know about Travis Kelce. I know she exists and people love her, but I’m not that personally invested. But now that I’ve listened to her audbiobook, I’m in. Her narration is the best kind— warm and conversational. Her little giggles here and there make it feel authentic.
Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera. This one is a murder mystery in which a true crime podcast features heavily. I assume the book has podcast “transcripts” throughout, but the audiobook production made the effort to make it sound like an actual podcast, jauntily sinister theme music included. After I finished listening, I had to wonder if I would have liked it as much if I just read it. This is a case of the audio format improving the story, I think.
Once More From the Top by Emily Layden. I’m cheating on this one because I actually don’t know that the audiobook is particularly special, but this is essentially Taylor Swift-murder-mystery-fanfiction and I can’t believe more people have not read this! It’s an enjoyable read!
Next time: Back on Sunday for the first of the US Nationals previews!
I have been saying for at least two years now that Maddie Schizas needs to change coaches but it would be lunacy to do that this close to the Olympics so I know it's not going to happen. She's stagnated pretty significantly and a new coach would probably help her. Skate Canada was great for her though.
If Skate Canada has any sense though they won't name the World team until after the Four Continents so she can skate against other Canadian women more than once and they'll have a better idea of how things stack up between at least a couple of them. She's dropped at Worlds the last two years so I don't think Skate Canada has anything more to lose or gain by sending someone else to try and get that 10th place for a second spot.
You did pretty good for a 'Murican who doesn't know much about Cdn skating. 😁
I would FLOVE to see Paradis on the podium. He's a national treasure. Or should be.
I'm also watching Fiona Bombarder with fingers crossed. Girl has potential.
And yeah, bring Keegs back until these other guys decide they're not scared of the podium. I think Gogolev will never make it - he's plagued by injuries and has grown too tall.
I agree the score gap between the top two dance teams should be much closer.