The time has come. Canadian pair champs Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps have trained the toughest tricks in the business, they have paid attention to their artistic side, they have built power and speed, all to win this world title on home ice in Montreal next week.
They have even been training their brains.
Why hadn’t anybody ever thought of this? Training your brain to focus, to stay concentrated?
The ever-diligent Stellato spends her spare time watching documentaries about other sports, she said Wednesday on a conference call. And she stumbled onto a Netflix documentary about a football quarterback who did brain training to focus for a longer period of time.
“Most of us can focus,” Stellato-Dudek said. “But the duration of time that we are focusing before we get distracted will vary from person to person.”
This quarterback in the documentary figured that if he could train himself to focus longer than anybody on the field, on any field, he could be the best quarterback in the business.
Stellato-Dudek went to Google, as one does. Fortunately, she found a place that undertakes neuro-feedback training in Montreal.
The idea is especially beneficial to her partner Maxime Deschamps, who has ADHD, (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.). It the most common childhood neurodevelopment disorder that often lasts into adulthood, when it can look like extreme restlessness.
A major symptom of ADHD is the inability to focus, to pay attention, to curb impulsive acts.
You’d think training pair skating would be hard enough. But this partnership has had to manage the ADHD, too.
Deschamps describes himself as a “strong ADHD” so it also makes life more complicated for Stellato-Dudek because “ADHD is like roller coaster,” he said. “That could make stuff difficult, but it also makes us improve, because we know stuff better. It’s a challenge, but when it’s time to go through a challenge, we have built a lot of stuff together. We have more tool to get through them.”
One of the tools, the brain work, has really helped with Deschamps’ ADHD, he said. “We see a huge difference in our training with that neuro-training,” he said.
Deschamps signed himself up for a round of treatments, with Stellato-Dudek watching wistfully. She wanted to do it too. It couldn’t hurt. But it’s not easy to get an appointment. Appointments are labour intensive. A practitioner can only do so many appointments in a day, plugging a person into a machine, and letting him/her watch TV.
Deschamps said that as you watch the television and get distracted, the television shuts off. “You are conditioning your brain to concentrate in different ways,” he said. You can make the task more complicated if you vary the task.
“It is extremely hard to stay concentrated for five minutes,” Deschamps said. “You don’t realize, but you just get better.”
It is exhausting.
After Deschamps finished his cycle of appointments, Stellato-Dudek went through a spate of them, too.
It’s also exhilarating for the pair to be skating in their home city, in the mecca of the Montreal Canadiens’ home ice, the Bell Centre, the largest hockey arena in North America with a total of 21.302 seats (not all of them being sold for the world figure skating championships.)
Although Stellato-Dudek was born in the United States, Deschamps was born in Montreal. He didn’t speak English until he was in his twenties. The Canadiens ruled. Deschamps went to their games.
At a Canadian team skate at the Bell Centre last week, Deschamps had to pause on the ice as he stepped on, looking around, taking it in. He pulled out his cell phone.
“What are you doing?” Stellato-Dudek asked him.
He was taking a selfie, with the Canadiens’ logo in the background. The logo won’t be there, come next week. There was no time to waste.
Stellato-Dudek also went to her first Habs game. She toured the locker rooms and the trophy rooms. “I think they have probably ruined me for all future Habs games,” she said. “…I thought: ‘How could I come back now? It will be hard to top this experience.’”
On the ice last week, Deschamps stared at all the banners, of retired numbers of some of the greatest players in the sport. There is a statue of Guy LaFleur there, too. That spells goosebumps to a Montrealer. All of the athletes from Montreal felt the same. Skating at the Bell Centre: historic.
The world figure skating championships were to have taken place at this arena, in this city four years ago, but were cancelled at the eleventh hour because of the COVID pandemic.
Stellato-Dudek had already begun to skate with Deschamps, but had not been released from the US Figure Skating Association. Therefore they could not compete internationally for Canada.
“When it was cancelled, I jokingly said to our coaches: ‘Oh it got cancelled because Max and I were supposed to be there,’” Stellato-Dudek said. “But we couldn’t, because we weren’t released yet, so they’re holding it for us until we are back.”
Their careers began slowly, partly because of the delayed release, partly because of the pandemic. Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps lost a couple of years. But now they have the passion and the ability to be a factor.
This season they have swept the Autumn Classic International, attaining their goal of breaking 200 total points at the beginning of the season; Skate Canada International, and Cup of China. They have broken the 200-barrier every time they have competed this season, except for Four Continents.
They finished third at the Grand Prix Final in China, and then easily won the Four Continents Championships, also in China. They have made mistakes in jumps and throws along the way. They have learned some lessons from it.
They have been working hard on the jumps they missed. And it’s been going well. They did a dry run last week at the Bell Centre that they’d like to repeat: it was so good.
They realized that most of their mistakes came from singles elements. In the short program at Four Continents, Deschamps fell on a triple toe loop and Stellato-Dudek looked disappointed when they skated off, although the rest of the program had been tops, with level fours all around.
In the free program they singled two double Axels in a three-jump combo, Deschamps stepped out of a triple Salchow, and Stellato-Dudek struggled with the landing of a throw triple loop near the end of their routine.
“For me, I’m so sick of missing things I land every day, like 100 times in practices,” Stellato-Dudek said. “I’m so sick of missing them exclusively in competition.”
So a new approach for next week: “I just really need to chill out when I’m out there and not over-try,” she said. “And so that’s what I’m going to try and do. I find I do best when I’m not over-trying.”
The most important thing is true: they are ready. They are much better at this point than they were last year, when they finished fourth in their worlds debut. Their training has been consistent. They are feeling confident.
“it’s been pretty wild,” said Deschamps, who has been through eight partnerships over the years with not a whiff of a world medal. “We feel ready. We just can’t wait to be there. It’s like: ‘Kids, let’s go.’”
“It’s time to be there.”
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