When Deanna Stellato-Dudek reflects on what her teenaged self would think about winning a first world title at age 40, the Canadian pair skater can’t help but be honest.
“She would say, ‘Why did we stop?’” laughs Stellato-Dudek, who on Thursday night (21 March) became the oldest woman to win a figure skating world title in the sport’s history alongside partner Maxime Deschamps.
“I’m still skating 25 years later?!” Deanna says her 15-year-old self would admit.
But for 16 of those years Deanna stepped away from the sport. After a silver medal in singles at the World Junior Championshipsshe was forced out due to a lingering hip injury, and didn’t pull her dusty skates out of her family’s basement until 2016, when she mulled a comeback – at 32.
“I think my younger self would think I’m crazy,” she continued after she and Deschamps claimed their title in front of a raucous Canadian crowd in Montreal, where they both train – and Maxime grew up.
“I think my younger self wouldn’t think much of [me now] at all,” she said, before adding: “She wanted to win the 2006 Olympics, so she would be wondering why I’m going to 2026.”
Stellato-Dudek does, indeed, appear headed for the coming Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026. When she made the move to Canada (from her home in the US) in 2019, she and Deschamps discussed the 2026 Games.
“We both said the 2026 Olympics,” was the goal, she told Olympics.com earlier this season. “And not one day has happened [that] wavered.”
“[Next week] we get back to work immediately on next season,” she explained. “I think if you fail to prepare, you’re preparing to fail. So the preparation starts now, and that’s a big part of the work to then be ready by the beginning of the season. And that’s really where I shine.”