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Deanna Stellato-Dudek’s Olympic dream is not over.
Defying all odds — again — she and Maxime Deschamps will compete at the Milan Cortina Games.
The Canadian Olympic Committee and Skate Canada said in a joint release Tuesday that Stellato-Dudek has been medically cleared after hitting her head on the ice on Jan. 30 while training in Quebec, keeping one of figure skating’s most inspiring stories alive.
“I want to thank everyone for their concern and support. I’ve been working closely with the medical team, and feel ready and excited to compete,” Stellato-Dudek said in a statement. “My priority right now is skating my best. Maxime and I respectfully ask the media to allow us space to focus on the competition.”
The COC said the decision to compete was made under the guidance of medical professionals and that Stellato-Dudek is feeling well and looking forward to competing.
The former world champions from Canada are expected to travel Wednesday, arriving Thursday in Italy, and set to take the ice in the individual pairs event on Sunday at Milano Ice Skating Arena after withdrawing from last week’s team event.
The 42-year-old Stellato-Dudek is poised to become the oldest female figure skater in nearly a century to compete at the Olympics.
She and Deschamps have often compared their journey to a Hollywood script almost too improbable to be true, with a series of comebacks, cliffhangers and can-do heroics. And now, another stunning twist.
“Our story is too crazy, with all the ups and downs,” Deschamps said in a January interview after being named to the Olympic team. “It’s too crazy to even be a movie.”
“Too crazy to make up,” Stellato-Dudek added.
Age-defying
Stellato-Dudek is an age-defying, newly minted Canadian — a former rising American star who returned to skating after 16 years off the ice.
Deschamps is a 34-year-old from Vaudreuil-Dorion, Que., and cycled through so many partners over the years that he came close to hanging up his skates.
Together, they were crowned 2024 world champions in Montreal, where Stellato-Dudek became the oldest female skater history to achieve the feat.
Her story was already a part of figure skating lore. Now she’s ready to write another chapter in Milan.
Originally from the Chicago area, Stellato-Dudek was a world junior silver medallist for the U.S. in 2000 before a chronic hip injury forced her into retirement at 17.
Putting years of dedication and dreams behind her, she set out to live a normal life off the ice. Stellato-Dudek went back to school full-time, became a licensed esthetician and got married.
Sixteen years later, a team-building exercise at a work retreat in 2016 sparked her unlikely return. She was asked, “What’s something you would do if you couldn’t fail.” Stellato-Dudek surprised herself by blurting out, “Win an Olympic gold medal.”
Two weeks later, she called her mom to dust off her old skates, and before long was back on competition ice — only this time in pairs.
“I did tell her she was crazy, for sure, but she proved me wrong again,” said her mother, Ann Stellato. “Something clicked inside of her, and she had to give it a try. Now her dream’s going to come true.
“Driven, hard-working, determined. That was her since she was a little girl.”
Deschamps, meanwhile, had always dreamt of the Olympics, but grew discouraged by having to “restart all the time” as he shuffled through eight different partners with middling success.
“I was about to stop,” he said. “And then Deanna appeared.”
After her previous partner retired, Stellato-Dudek travelled north of the Canada-U.S. border for a tryout with Deschamps in 2019. She was stunned to hear his “thick Quebecois accent,” but once they entered their first spin on the ice, he literally swept Stellato-Dudek off her feet.
“Maxime had a power that I had not experienced before,” she said. “I thought of him as a diamond in the rough that nobody had found yet.”
Yin-and-yang
Deschamps describes their partnership as a yin-and-yang.
Stellato-Dudek is a fiery perfectionist, unafraid to demand high standards during practice sessions. The lighthearted Deschamps — who says life with Stellato-Dudek is “the Olympics every day” — counters her intensity with a persistent positivity at the rink.
The pair has struggled to stay consistent the past two seasons despite remaining among the world’s elite, finishing a disappointing fifth at the world championships last year to end their title-defence campaign.
The three-time Canadian champions also dropped to a surprising second-place finish at nationals in January, as Stellato-Dudek battled through a stomach bug, but still secured an Olympic berth before the training accident put her long-sought dream in jeopardy.
Veteran coach Josee Picard says in more than 50 years in the sport, she’s never seen an athlete with Stellato-Dudek’s level of commitment and never-say-die attitude, describing her drive as “the craziness of Deanna.”
“Her life is just this,” Picard said. “She gave up everything. She had a great-paying job … she was married.”
On top of the daily hours of recovery she puts in to keep pace with competitors almost half her age, Stellato-Dudek recently revealed in an Olympic Channel documentary the personal sacrifices she’s made to get closer to her dream.
That includes leaving a relationship behind to move to Canada, where she became a citizen in December 2024, and coming to terms with the possibility she may never have children.
Thinking about her age, Stellato-Dudek says her journey has taken on meaning beyond herself. She received thousands of messages after becoming a world champion from people inspired to pursue long-held dreams they thought had passed by.
“I feel young girls and women, at a certain point, they’re just expected to give up on their dreams and go into whatever life is in front of them and to stop taking up space in this world,” she said. “I want to prove that you don’t need to recoil. You can stand your ground, you can stay steadfast in the pursuit of your dreams and your passions.
“You can be successful regardless of your age.”
Stellato-Dudek is intent on having an Olympic moment. She and Deschamps plan to perform the first assisted backflip in Olympic competition during their “Carmina Burana” short program.
She’s also set to skate in costumes designed by luxury fashion house Oscar de la Renta, wearing a glitter-gold outfit for the short program and a red dress — with a signature flower at the collar — in the free skate.
“We’ve always pushed the envelope,” she said. “Tried to leave figure skating a little bit better than how we found it.”
The storybook ending for Stellato-Dudek is simple. Two clean programs, with every jump and throw fully rotated and landed — whether they leave Milan with a medal or not.
But it’s already a story of determination, fearlessness and a never-say-die attitude that is the stuff of Olympic legend.
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