Stellato-Dudek/ Deschamps are not going down without a fight

Their Olympic dream was about to evaporate but pair skaters Deanna Stellato-Dudek/Maxime Deschamps refused to give up. Stellato-Dudek had suffered an injury in practice, just shortly before leaving for Italy. She was medically cleared on Monday, February 9 and the team left two days later. Now they are in Milan and ready to compete.

The 2024 World Champions had a first practice on Friday in the practice rink of the Milan Ice Skating Arena and looked really good. But most of all, they looked so happy to be here. After the Friday practice session, Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps spoke to a group of reporters. Although she would not explain what exactly had happened, she wanted to clarify some things.

Deanna: The last week and a half has been a living nightmare that I would not wish on anybody.  I have been told by doctors that I've made a ‘remarkable recovery’ and I have to say I am extremely thankful to Skate Canada, to the Canadian Olympic Committee, to all the team of doctors that I saw, and in addition I received thousands of messages from people all around the world.  They were lighting a candle for me and praying for me and I also believe that that is what got me here.

Maxime: It has been difficult seeing that the dream was like slipping under our feet. But I still believe in Deanna the whole time and I've been training super hard during that time and support her. We were still hoping and everything and that was important to keep that belief. We tried to stay positive.

 (on her injury)

Deanna: I'm not going to get into specifics (of the injury). It's been less than 10 days. I myself have not processed what has happened. From the moment the accident occurred, the only focus was tunnel vision on how can I get here. I'm going to need time to perseverate and process what happened before I can speak about it with any eloquency whatsoever. 

 (on feeling the Olympic atmosphere)

Deanna: Well, to be honest, since we arrived here and we saw the Olympic rings, we've taken a bunch of photographs and I've cried before everyone, so I look hideous in every picture I've taken. But it's very emotional to be here.  When I set out on this journey in 2016, not one person told me I would make it to the Olympics and they thought I would be there at 34 and I'm 42. To to know me is to know that I wasn't going down without a fight. 

(on getting back to training after the accident)

Deanna: If I were to take a 10-day vacation and then come back, I'm afraid to do everything. But there's a very famous quote by Eleanor Roosevelt that says that you should do something every day that scares you, and I'm like, well, I checked that box, no problem. Of course, I was afraid to do even a jump like a triple toe, which I landed on my first try after 16 years of not skating, so it sounds kind of crazy to be afraid to do it after 10 days. But  you have to rip off the band-aid, and again, everybody told me I wouldn't make it here. For sure, I was going to pull in on those (jumps) and do them again at some point. You have fear, but you have to go through it. That's it. There's no other option.

(on training in the Olympic rink)

Deanna: We train on NHL sized ice, so to transition to Olympic is always like a pattern process to kind of reset yourself. But in general, I felt pretty good. It's normal competition ice.

Maxime: It was fun. It was really fun seeing the rings on the board and everything.  But at the same time, we arrived later. So it's like just another normal competition for us, but just with more attention.

Deanna: It feels like the World Olympics, if that makes sense. Usually we arrive two days before our competition.

(on possible changes to their programs)

Deanna: We've decided to take out the backflip in our short program. Obviously, we don't want to do anything that's going to hinder the rest of my life in terms of my health. I have very long lineage in my family. Italians live till they're in their 90s. So I would like to live a healthy life for the rest of those years. We just wanted to take out any unnecessary risk.  Everything else in skating is pretty much upright. That's the only thing that goes upside down. So we just to mitigate any risk to my personal health going forward, we took that element out. Also, I'm not sure if any of you have noticed if this is your second, third, fourth, fifth Olympic Games. But there tend to be a lot of accidents at games, it's this weird contagious thing through all of the disciplines. As I was seeing people getting injured on everything, we were like, maybe I should think about what's best for my personal health going forward. The team made the decision just to remove that element. As you know, it's not a required element. It was really just like the buffer of a diamond. 

(on the accident)

Deanna: I was only off three days. I haven't seen any reporting from any reputable reporters such as all of yourselves because you're held to a certain level of standards. When you are not a reputable reporter you're held to I suppose no standards at all. Nearly everything that I've seen or heard (about the injury) has been incorrect.  We were only off the ice for three days. Obviously, the first day we got back on it wasn't like we were able to do everything. It was step by step each day making sure when I woke up the next morning that I continue to improve and feel stronger. Obviously it's not the ideal training that you get before the before the Olympics but it could have been a heck of a lot worse.

I feel totally fine. I feel like nothing happened. The doctors said I was a remarkable recovery and that they were extremely impressed. If they told me to do an exercise five to ten times a day I did it 11.

Being a 42 year old athlete, you have to take extremely specific care of your body, water intake, diet, supplements, obviously all that are approved and recovery. I don't drink, I don't smoke. I am extremely healthy.  I do think that being able to treat my body like that for the last decade has helped me to heal very quickly. I also want to specify I do not have a concussion. That would have been difficult to recover from this fast.

(on her injury)

Deanna: In every country there are laws surrounding privacy for any individual about their medical records and those laws exist for a reason. I don't deserve to know anybody else's personal medical information nor do you deserve to learn mine.  As I just said we are still processing through all that happened and I'm still doing my exercises off ice. I can't even speak about it eloquently until I fully process this and I have no idea how long that will be.

(on the support of their teammates)

Deanna: I'm so proud of my Canadian teammates, especially Lia (Pereira) and Trennt (Michaud) stepping up for us at the last minute to do the short program in the team event. They did such a great job. They were all super supportive, but also gave me space to be allowed to heal. They all came up and greeted us personally when we arrived yesterday. There was a special camaraderie with Team Canada this year. I'm very grateful to all my teammates.

(on her designer dresses)

Deanna: Can I clarify something about the dresses? I was misquoted at nationals. Okay, I did not pay for them, so everybody knows I cannot afford a custom Oscar de la Renza. I feel like that's pretty standard for a figure skater. Number two is I did not reach them on LinkedIn. I wrote them on LinkedIn, hoping to get a contact. They did not respond. Nobody responded. I was able to get a hold of them through a woman named Amanda Damare, who is a former figure skater, a figure skating fan, and on the board of Skate Canada. She was the one that made the connection.

(on their message to the Canadian fans)

Maxime: Just to send us love and that we're gonna carry the value of Canada out there and we're just gonna have fun out there and we want to show that to the whole country.

Deanna: I just want them to be happy for us that we were able to step on Olympic ice and have this experience and I also want them to understand my gratitude to them because I received so many messages from them and I believe that that's part of the reason I'm here.