MILAN – Canadian champions Lia Pereira and Trennt Michaud finished third in the pairs short program, while Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps sit 14th after a costly fall Sunday at the Milan Cortina Olympic Games.
Pereira, of Milton, Ont., and Michaud, of Trenton, Ont., produced a season’s best 74.60 — shattering their previous mark of 70.66 — after a beautiful skate to “Say You Love Me” by Jessie Ware, lifting their arms in elation when the score was announced.
Germany’s Minerva Fabienne Hase and Nikita Volodin stood in first place with 80.01 points, while Georgia’s Anastasia Metelkina and Luka Berulava placed second with 75.46. Pereira and Michaud held a 0.73-point lead over Hungary’s Maria Pavlova and Alexei Sviatchenko.
At 42, Stellato-Dudek became the oldest female figure skater to compete at the Olympics in nearly a century, a little more than two weeks after she hit her head on the ice during a training session in Quebec.
She and Deschamps, the 2024 world champions, scored 66.04 to the epic “Carmina Burana” by Carl Orff, losing points when Stellato-Dudek tripped on the exit of their lasso lift. She and Deschamps appeared to touch skate blades before she went down in an otherwise strong program.
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Pereira, 21, and the 29-year-old Michaud are in medal position after impressing for Canada in both team event programs last week.
The duo joined up in August 2022. Michaud was searching for a new teammate after longtime partner Evelyn Walsh retired, and Pereira was a singles skater. They finished 11th, eighth and sixth in the past three world championships, and captured their first national title in January.
Stellato-Dudek’s pre-Olympic injury — she hasn’t disclosed what it was, except that it was not a concussion — jeopardized a long-held Olympic dream.
She and Deschamps, a 34-year-old from Vaudreuil-Dorion, Que., withdrew from the team event and only arrived in Italy on Thursday after Stellato-Dudek received medical clearance. To avoid unnecessary risk, the pair removed their assisted backflip from the short program.
Stellato-Dudek is the oldest woman to compete in Olympic figure skating since Ethel Muckelt, also 42, represented Great Britain at the 1928 Winter Games in St. Moritz, Switzerland.
Her story is the stuff of legend in the figure skating world.
Born outside Chicago, Stellato-Dudek is a former U.S. singles rising star who retired at 17 because of chronic hip problems. She returned 16 years later as a pairs skater, eventually moving to the Montreal area in 2019 to partner with Deschamps, becoming a Canadian citizen in December 2024.
Deschamps was on the brink of calling it quits before joining Stellato-Dudek, discouraged after cycling through eight partners.
Since winning the world championships, Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps have struggled with consistency, finishing fifth at last year’s worlds and sixth at the Grand Prix Final in December. They also came second at nationals, with Stellato-Dudek battling a stomach bug.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 15, 2026.
© 2026 The Canadian Press
