In 2018, at the Gangneung Ice Arena in Pyeongchang, legendary ice dancers Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir strapped on their skates for the final time at the Olympics.
Needing an all-time free-dance performance to secure gold, the Canadian duo delivered a stirring Moulin Rouge routine, vaulting them to the top of the podium, with a world-record score to boot.
“They are the greatest ice dancers of their generation, maybe of all time,” CBC Sports analyst Brenda Irving said in the wake of the performance that reverberated from coast to coast.
It remains the most recent Canadian Olympic gold medal in the sport.
Virtue and Moir’s triumph was one of four podium appearances for Canadian figure skaters in Pyeongchang. The immortal duo also helped Canada win team gold, while Kaetlyn Osmond and the pair of Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford each claimed bronze.
Eight years later, Canada would be happy to leave with one medal at Milano Cortina 2026.
As it turns out, you don’t simply follow one golden generation with another.
CBC Sports host Perdita Felicien and analyst Asher Hill dig into the highs, the challenges and the future of Canadian figure skating as the Winter Olympics approach.
The Milan team will be set at senior nationals, which begin Thursday in Gatineau, Que. Live coverage is available on CBCSports.ca and CBC Gem beginning with the men’s short program at 4:45 p.m. ET.
Skate Canada high-performance director Mike Slipchuk said he has leaned on his 2018 experience to prepare the current group.
“For a lot of our planning, to get this team ready, I kind of reached back on 2018 just on process and things that we did this season leading in to help our athletes. And I feel we’re in a good place, but like I said, it’s gonna be a different Games,” he said.
Indeed, there does not appear to be any illusion of matching that four-medal haul.
The most optimistic projection for Canada — which did not reach a single podium at Beijing 2022 for the first time since 1984 — would be three medals, including Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier in ice dance, Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps in pairs and the team event.
“I do think that a lot of the success in 2018 can be attributed to the large investment that was made in sport leading up to the Vancouver Olympics,” said Poirier, who is set for his third Olympics alongside Gilles.
“A lot of the skaters were skating leading up to the 2010 Olympics, but there was so much investment in winter sport. And I think that was the kind of the after effect of all of that. But I think there’s so many factors, and I think we’re just really excited to be writing the new chapter for Team Canada.”
Rebuilding after 2018 Olympic gold rush
After 2018, Canada’s figure skaters dropped off one by one. Virtue and Moir never competed again, announcing their retirement in late 2019. Duhamel and Radford retired in April 2018. Osmond won the world title just months after Pyeongchang in what turned out to be her final competitive performance. Patrick Chan, part of the gold-medal team, also called it a career that April.
Canada’s star-studded figure skating group was, well, ripped to the studs.
The COVID-marred 2022 Olympics were strange, and stranger still in the figure skating arena, which was dominated by the Kamila Valieva doping scandal.
And so it went quietly that Canada failed to win a medal, coming closest with a fourth-place finish in the team event that was held in limbo for years after due to the Valieva investigation. Even while Valieva’s performances were erased, Canada did not leap onto the podium, with the Russians falling from team gold to bronze instead.
Meanwhile, Gilles and Poirier were burdened by the expectations set four years earlier.
“We felt a little bit more of that weight that we needed to continue that legacy,” Gilles said. “Paul and I felt like we were constantly asked, ‘How are you going to beat the golden team? How are you going to make this team better than that one?’ And the answer is you can’t.’”
Instead, the attitude toward that 2018 team has shifted.
Gilles and Poirier said they haven’t spoken to their predecessors, Virtue and Moir, as they get set to lead Canada in Italy.
“I think that leadership role is so different for so many people. And I think Paul and I are kind of just learning as we go on how we can support the next generation and share our failures and share our success stories and encourage them to find their own space and their own lane in this sport,” said Gilles, who along with Poirier was speaking to shed light on a new Sobey’s partnership.
Behind the scenes, in conversations with Slipchuk, Moir has lauded Gilles and Poirer’s growth.
Gilles, Poirier revitalized
For Gilles and Poirier, though, a new tact must be taken in pursuit of their first Olympic medal.
“We have kind of, these last four years, taken that weight off of ourselves and gone back and really leaned into our why, why we do this. We love storytelling, we love figure skating. Paul and I are the biggest nerds of figure skating. We are purists with this sport. And I think continuing that kind of mentality allows us to not think about the noise,” Gilles said.
The strategy seems to be working: Gilles and Poirier have claimed medals in four of the past five world championships, including two silver and two bronze.
However, it is their most recent result — a controversial fourth-place finish by six one-hundredths of a point at the Grand Prix Final in December — which is providing the most drive toward Italy.
Gilles initially spoke out about the result on social media. Now, though, she’s putting it behind her.
“Having a little bit of disappointment, it’s a huge fuel to kind of come back and be like, look, we know we belong there. Let’s go home and figure out what may be missing,” she said.
Ice dancer Piper Gilles reflects on her journey with Paul Poirier, the importance of staying true to herself, and her dream of recreating a childhood moment on the Olympic podium.
Along with Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps, Gilles and Poirier were highlighted by Slipchuk as Canadian competitors who could beat the best in the world on any given day.
Stellato-Dudek, who became a Canadian citizen last year, and Deschamps won the 2024 world title in a banner year where they also took gold at the Four Continents and bronze at the Grand Prix Final.
The current season hasn’t been as kind as the duo finished a distant last at the Grand Prix Final, struggling to complete clean skate.
Jackie Wong, a former figure skater and coach who founded the media outlet Rocker Skating, said pairs will be the deepest competition in Milan, with at least eight teams in the mix for a medal, including the Canadians.
“They can go you know, 75-145 [in the short and long programs]. And if you get to that level of your scores, then you become competitive for the podium,” Wong said. “I think part of the issues have also been, even when they land stuff, it’s a little bit shaky and that just kills your score, especially when there are all these other quality pairs out there doing really good stuff.”
In some ways, the two-person disciplines have not dropped precipitously. Sure, Gilles and Poirier may not be Virtue and Moir, but Canada still boasts two medal contenders.
Hope forming in singles
It is singles where Canada may have fallen behind — where there has been no clear replacement for the Osmonds and Chans of the world.
After 2018, Stephen Gogolev was touted as the next big thing in Canadian figure skating, landing quads and winning every domestic competition during the 2016-17 season.
When the Pyeongchang team stepped aside, Gogolev — still just 21 years old — was expected to fill the void. Instead, injuries prevented him from competing consistently. He missed the Beijing Olympics altogether.
The Toronto native, however, finally found health this season and showed there is some untapped potential yet. He won his first senior international gold medal at the Nebelhorn Trophy in September, then took his first Grand Prix medal with bronze at the Finlandia Trophy two months later.
Suddenly, men’s singles at nationals will be the most competitive it’s been in years, with Gogolev a strong contender against the likes of Roman Sadovsky and the returning Keegan Messing.
“Oftentimes the question is not who makes it to the world team or to the Olympic team. It’s who survives to make it to the world team or Olympic team,” Wong said. “And I think that’s changed this season. Both on the men’s side and on the women’s side, I think the rebuilding of the last four years has led to a deeper field.”
Slipchuk agreed with Wong’s assessment: “Definitely we feel farther ahead than we were four years ago,” he said.
Still, the challenge at the international level is greater than it once was.
Both Wong and Slipchuk acknowledged that figure skating is much deeper now, with many more countries producing top-tier athletes thanks to improved and globalized coaching.
WATCH | Gogolev takes bronze at 2025 Finlandia Trophy:
At home, Slipchuk noted some recent challenges have included competition with other sports to bring budding athletes into the fold. Wong surmised that the spread-out nature of Canada has led to siloed development, noting that Gogolev and Sadovsky recently started training together, fostering competition.
Meanwhile, longtime powerhouse countries like Japan have found ways to spread their talent over multiple disciplines more so than in generations past.
“It’s not just the Japanese and the U.S. that you’re chasing. You’re chasing so many other countries now that are all in the mix there. It’s good for skating and it’s good for the sport,” Slipchuk said.
On the women’s side, 2022 Olympian Maddie Schizas will be challenged by the likes of Sara-Maude Dupuis, who was one of the first Canadian women to land a triple-axel in competition, and the returning Gabrielle Daleman, the 2018 team gold medallist who came out of retirement to attempt to reach Italy.
Eye on the next generation
Beneath the surface, Canada won its most medals on the Junior Grand Prix circuit in two decades this season thanks in part to 13-year-old Lia Cho, who won 2025 junior nationals.
There is optimism to be had that a fresh batch of Canadian figure skating stars in on the way. The natural flow of any sports program means it is impossible to stay on top — to reach those 2018 heights — year after year after year.
What these 2026 Olympics can be for Canadian figure skating, then, is a momentum builder through increased competition, unexpected performances and perhaps even some hardware.
Even 2018 wasn’t necessarily expected to be what it was, Slipchuk said. Now, though, it is time to move on.
“We hear a lot about our team from 2018. That was a special time and you’ll never replicate that,” he said.
“All we can ask is our team goes out, performs to the best of their abilities. We feel we have two disciplines that we feel that they’re right there on the date, that anything is possible, which is great. And we have some that, it’s still just a building process, but doesn’t take away from what we expect them to do when they get there.”
Source link
