Back flipping to the Olympics

Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxim Deschamps make history every time they step onto the ice.

It could be that – now 42 – she’s the oldest skater crazy enough to undertake this most dangerous of skating disciplines. And there was that mind-twisty forward outside death spiral that others would never tackle. And a high-risk lift with almost no room for error.

But on Sept. 2 at Chelsea Pier in New York at the John Nicks Pair Challenge, Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps unleashed a back flip in the short program. An assisted one. First one ever by a pair.

Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps are leading after the short program with a score of 70.77 but Stellato-Dudek missed the takeoff on her triple toe loop. They sit atop of U.S. champs Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov with 66.85. Efimova doubled her triple toe loop. Both teams had level four triple twists.

Back flips are now legal, but who ever thought that anybody other than male competitors would try them.? (There was Surya Bonaly, mind you, standing alone in her field at a “Take That” moment in the freeskate at the 1998 Olympics in Nagano.)

“Maxime and I have the opportunity to make a lot of history this year,” Stellato-Dudek said at a national team training camp last week. “Because of my age, because of his age, because of our combined age.
All of the above.”

The next oldest woman in the international pair field is 18 years younger than Stellato-Dudek. Deschamps is now 33 years old.

“So I thought, how much more history can we make this year?” she pondered.

“Because they changed the rules in figure skating last year, we’ve only ever seen this element being performed by men,” she said. “It has never been done by a pair team. It has never been done by a dance team. So we’ll make history at the Olympics doing it for the first time. So we’re playing a game to see how much history we can make this year.”

It was Stellato-Dudek’s idea. Of course. She just knew she could do it.

Deschamps was quite against it in the beginning, fearing injury during an Olympic season.

“You just have to trust me,” Stellato-Dudek said.

Deschamps wouldn’t budge. NO!

During their vacation, Stellato-Dudek got him to go to a gymnasium, promising him that if she could scare up a gymnastics coach and perhaps they could just do it in their shoes?

Deschamps relented and said okay.

Stellato-Dudek found a former Canadian gymnastics Olympian, Rose Kaying Woo, who competed at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. They did the back flip on the first day.

“Told ya,” Stellato-Dudek said.

Why in the name of Gordeeva and Grinkov would this former world champion Canadian pair want to do such a risky move? It’s for GOE points only. “It’s to be different. To be new,” she said. “Max and I almost every year, we’ve done something that nobody else does. Sometimes it gets copied, sometimes it doesn’t. But I don’t think this one’s going to be copied any time soon.”

The trick involves Deschamps giving his partner his hand. She steps on him and jumps off backward.

(Video thanks to Mikichka Figure Skater)

“At first, she was having this crazy of stepping from my shoulder and jumping,” Deschamps said. “Like, no way.”

“We went to the gymnasium and that’s where we really worked it.”

“Okay, it’s possible,” he conceded.

After they did it the first day, Deschamps “totally made a 180 and was all about it,” Stellato-Dudek said.

Then they had to put their skates on and do it. Deschamps has to find a way to get underneath his partner properly so she can push away.

Deschamps taped her skate guards to her blades and they tried in in the pit, then on a mat, then on the floor, then on the vault. Everything in gymnastics has a spring and they are not used to that. They did it on wood.

“Now it is no longer the scariest thing I’ve tried,” she said.

They originally weren’t going to debut it until their first Grand Prix of the season in France Oct. 17 to 19, but it’s been working so well, they decided to do it at the John Nicks event, the second Challenger event of the season. They will also compete at the Skate Canada International in Saskatoon Oct. 31 to Nov. 2.

And the back flip isn’t the only tasty bit they plan to dish up this season. They are planning yet another surprise, but they are keeping this one to themselves.

They were brave to tackle the forward outside death spiral in recent years – a move hardly anybody had ever done. But now, yes, it’s been copied. Among the top 20 pair teams in the world, five attempted it at the most recent world championships in Boston. And one of them, Alisa Efiomova and Misha Mtriofanov got higher scores for it than the Canadians.

Minerva Fabienne Has and Nikita Volodin of Germany won the free skate last year and included a forward outside death spiral, but were scored .20 behind the Canadians on it. None of the five teams got higher than a level 3 in difficulty.

But just watch. Even though the Chinese haven’t been as dominant in recent years as at previous Olympics, the Chinese watch everything. And copy it, with excellence.

At the first Junior Grand Prix in Riga, Latvia, young Chinese pair Yuangi Zhang and Wenguing Feng did a forward outside death spiral and got a level FOUR for it, earning a lofty 5.48 points.

So the sport advances, especially in an Olympic year. And despite their ages, Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps find new ground to mine, every year.