At 40, Deanna Stellato-Dudek wows home crowds at figure skating worlds

MONTREAL – Pair skater Deanna Stellato-Dudek is the grande dame of figure skating and, at 40, is trying to become the oldest female skater to win a world title in any discipline.

“You know,” she said, “there’s no point in figure skating to be old.”

She and her 32-year-old partner Maxime Deschamps got more of them on Wednesday with their best short program performance in three seasons of international competition together.

Their 77.48 points gave the Canadians a 3.95 on Thursday night over defending champions Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara of Japan.

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The third-place team of Italy’s Sara Conti and Niccolo Macii scored 72.88, meaning the top three posted the three highest short program scores of the season.

Much has been done and written Stellato-Dudek’s comeback after a 16-year absence from the sport single skater A suburb of Chicago. The International Skating Union (ISU) recently recognized him with a special achievement award.

She quit the sport at age 17, one season after winning silver at the junior world championships, because constant injuries and burnout caused her to hate figure skating and quit it altogether. She returned as a married woman in a different discipline.

“I think it’s normal to want to get as far away as you can if you feel like you haven’t done everything you want to in a sport,” he said.

“When I came back, my only goal was not to leave early this time. (I wanted) to feel like I gave it everything I had, whether I could or not, so that when I’m 80 years old, enjoying a glass of wine at dinner, I can say, “You know, I went back and did it. .’”

Unless he’s still skating at 80, that is.

She began pairing with U.S. skater Nathan Bartholomay, with whom she would go on to win bronze at the 2018 and 2019 U.S. Championships, before the partnership ended when knee problems with her left Bartholomay’s competitive future uncertain. An extensive search for a new partner led him to Deschamps from Montreal.

Stellato-Dudek, in his 40s, had to adopt a semi-Spartan lifestyle of high-regimen diet and two or three hours of off-ice work each night to prepare his body for the next day’s practice.

“I’m impressed with what he’s done,” Deschamps said.

It earned them a Grand Prix Final bronze medal, two straight Canadian titles and a (somewhat disappointing) fourth at the 2023 world championships. Their ultimate goal is the 2026 Olympics, and Stellato-Dudek said she would most likely have to obtain Canadian citizenship in order to compete. (Olympic citizenship rules are stricter than ISU rules.)

“I don’t really think about doing more than everybody else,” he said. “I just have to push myself to feel as ready as all my competitors.”

It is not revealed that most of them are quite young. For example, Miura is 22 years old, Conti is 23 years old.

She is a lady of a certain age in sports. Still, his team’s score on Wednesday suggests this is a fine type of wine.

They broke their previous short program personal best by 4.45. Six of the nine judges gave them a total of 13 program component scores (PCS) of nine or better, surpassing their personal bests for both PCS and technical execution.

And, to boot, they did it without losing their cool in front of a roaring home crowd that clearly accepted Stellato-Dudek as one of their own.

“I said at the beginning that it’s important to acknowledge that there’s a lot of pressure,” he said. “This is where Max is and we both have lots of friends and family here.

“My friends don’t watch figure skating. They just follow me. I wanted to do so well that they would think I was cool.”

He was as cool as only an old hand can be at this game.

Philip Hersh, figure skater at the last 12 Winter Olympics, makes a special contribution. NBCSports.com.