Barely seven months after being crowned pairs world champions at the Montreal Worlds, Maxime Deschamps and Deanna Stellato-Dudek once again delighted their fans by winning gold at the Skate Canada Grand Prix on Saturday in Halifax.
Published yesterday at 8:46 p.m.
Provisionally in the lead at the end of the short program the day before, Deschamps and Stellato-Dudek confirmed their victory by obtaining a score of 124.10 points for their free program, the second best harvest of the session presented on Saturday at the start of evening.
All this, despite a fall and some costly technical errors.
“It wasn’t our easiest outing tonight, but these things happen and you have to learn from that to move forward better,” admitted Deschamps as he left the ice rink.
“You have to quickly forget about mistakes on the ice and stay in the present moment to continue the routine well. This is what we did, he continued. […] The positive is that we will learn from this. When things go well, we learn much less than when things don’t go as planned. It was very pleasant to perform in front of our fans and we will come back even stronger. »
The Quebec couple completed the competition with a total of 197.33 points and gold around their necks. Ekaterina Geynish and Dmitrii Chigirev (189.65) of Uzbekistan took second place, while Anastasia Golubeva and Hektor Giotopoulos Moore (186.14) of Australia took bronze. .
Also registered in this event, Quebecers Kelly Ann Laurin and Loucas Éthier took eighth place in the ranking with a total of 163.60 points.
Sara-Maude Dupuis tenth in singles
A few hours later, it was Sara-Maude Dupuis’ turn to jump on the ice at the Scotiabank Center to present her free routine. Ninth after the short program played on Friday, the Montrealer obtained a score of 106.31 to finish tenth (160.46).
“I am happy with my performance and to have offered a good program until the end despite small hiccups. I think my routine can bring me a lot more points than what I had tonight, but I am motivated to return to training to continue improving,” Dupuis said in an interview.
The Japanese Kaori Sakamoto (201.21), Rino Matsuike (192.16) and Hana Yoshida (191.37) invaded the podium in this event.
The other two Canadians competing, Madeline Schizas (190.04) and Kaiya Ruiter (162.32), finished fifth and eighth, respectively.
Finally, in ice dance, note that Marjorie Lajoie and Zachary Lagha occupy the second provisional level after the rhythm dance, where they obtained a score of 77.34 points Saturday afternoon.
“We made a big mistake, but for the rest of our routine we are very happy. We were in a good state of mind before the competition and we were focused on the goal. We do not have much control over our mistake today and we will make the necessary corrections for tomorrow,” explained Lajoie at the end of the day.
Ontarians Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier (86.44) are at the top of the rankings less than 24 hours before the free dance, while Alicia Fabbri and Paul Ayer (70.10) are provisionally ninth.
The Skate Canada Grand Prix will conclude on Sunday.
