MONTREAL
There were those who scoffed in the beginning.
The doubters questioned a woman past her figure-skating prime wanting to turn back the clock and compete toe to toe with those a decade or two younger.
“That woman is never going to do anything,” we were told. She had flights of fancy, that’s all. She was blowing into the wind.
It seems it’s not such a crazy idea after all. Yesterday, that woman, Deanna Stellato-Dudek became the oldest woman at age 40 to win a world figure skating championship gold medal with her partner, Maxime Deschamps. Take that, you doubters of the spirit.
Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps won the world title on Thursday over last year’s champs Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara in a closely fought battle.
Miura and Kihara actually won the free skate by .27 points over the Canadians. But Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps had a four-point cushion after winning the short program. And they won by almost four points.
The short program to “Oxygene”, their tribute to Montreal, brought them the win.
The victory score was 221.56. Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps were ecstatic when they earned a best free program score of 144.08.
New German team Minerva Fabienne Hase and Nikita Volodin were taken aback to win the bronze medal in their first year together. Both are 24 years old, sixteen years younger than Stellato-Dudek.
“Deanna and Max are super inspiring,” Hase said. “Especially like Deanna and Max as a team, they grow so much in the last seasons, which is inspiring [to us] to also grow next season.
“With your [Deanna’s] age, it is amazing. We are all bowing in front of you. …To see you do this free program, you have my highest respect for sure.”
Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps were awarded their gold medals in front of a large, noisy crowd, who started cheering as they went into their last element of the free program.
After the medal ceremony, former Canadian champion Keegan Messing skated around the ice, carrying a giant Canadian flag – the flag he always used to fly to cheer on his fellow Canadians in the stands while he was a competitor.
Miura and Kihara didn’t make it to the medal ceremony, because of a medical emergency. Coach Bruno Marcotte said they had been happy to have won a silver medal and “we were talking and there was a lot of emotion,” he said.
“All of a sudden Ryuichi started to cough quite a bit, and he went into hyperventilation,” Marcotte said. “And then he went into a case of extreme low blood sugar.”
Kihara became dizzy, and although he tried to stand a couple of times, he could not keep his balance, Marcotte said.
Doctors put him on a stretcher and gave him fluids. The Japanese skater began to feel better by the time Marcotte headed off to a press conference, but said he felt extremely guilty that he could not do his duties to get the medal and congratulate the winners.
Ryuichi wasn’t alone in sprouting rubbery legs. Stellato-Dude also admitted she felt “a little bit sick, not like myself” the day of the free program.
“I put my coaches and Max through a really hard time before the program because I wasn’t sure how I was going to do,” she said. “Our warmup was terrible.”
Deschamps said it had been a tough day, and stressful.
However, her coaches and partner told her that if she was going to do this, she should get out there and fight, and “give it everything you got.”
Stellato-Dudek believes they were able to get through the program because they had trained so hard. And they did it in front of family and friends in the boisterous crowd.
“I really didn’t want to let anyone down,” Stellato-Dudek said.
Pleased at how it ended, Stellato-Dudek said it was “really a dream come true for me.”
When she finished, she cried: “Oh my god!”
She might take the next day off, and maybe the rest of the week, buy something with the name “Chanel” on it and then start back to work again, preparing for next season. “I think if you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail,” she said.
Deschamps said their success is due to her fierce determination. “She is a warrior,” he said. “She comes every day and for her, it is Olympics every day. It’s all that determination that she has, it makes it special.”
To finally stand at the door of a world championship they knew they could win – and at home – put the highest pressure on them they had ever known. “It was new for us,” Deschamps said. “To pass through this, it was something great to do together.”
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