By Lori Ewing
Jan 15 (Reuters) - In a sport built around youth, Deanna Stellato-Dudek has thrived on standing apart.
At 42, the Canadian pair skater will make her Olympic debut at the Milano Cortina Games — not as a novelty act or a farewell story, but as a world champion determined to contend for gold, and with no plans to walk away when the Olympics are over.
Stellato-Dudek is an extraordinary comeback story. Once a teen sensation, she retired due to injury only to return 16 years later.
She became
the oldest female world figure skating champion when she and partner Maxime Deschamps won in 2024.
And now, she aims to become the oldest pair skater to win an Olympic title, at an age when most figure skaters have long since left the competitive ice behind.
"Because of my age, people say time is ticking for me," Stellato-Dudek said in a recent Olympics.com documentary. "Make no mistake, I'm going to do everything it takes to win, because I want to be Olympic champion. I'm going to do what it takes to become the oldest Olympic champion ever."
Stellato-Dudek captured a world junior silver medal for the United States before a serious hip flexor injury derailed everything when she was 17. She announced her retirement less than a year before the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics.
"My life was skating full speed ahead for my entire life up until that moment," she said. "Then it was like a slap in the face."
Her mother Ann Stellato remembers the moment.
"I just remember her very sombrely saying, 'I don't think I can do this anymore'," she told Olympics.com.
Stellato-Dudek's dad, who she largely credits for her work ethic, had died when she was 11. She often wonders if she would have walked away from skating as a teen had he still been alive.
She built a career outside the sport as an aesthetician and learned to live life away from the rink. But skating never fully let go of her.
"Even when I was retired, I would hear a song on the radio and imagine myself skating to it," she said.
'MY CHILDHOOD DREAM WAS TO GO TO THE OLYMPICS'
Watching the 2010 Vancouver Olympics was particularly painful.
"I would turn them on and turn them off and turn them on and turn them off, because that was my childhood dream was to go to the Olympics," she said. "It does sting and burn no matter how much time passes."
The moment that changed everything came during a bonding exercise at a work retreat in 2016. She was asked: what would you do if you knew you could not fail?
Her answer came out unfiltered.
"I would win an Olympic gold medal," she said - an answer that took her by surprise. "Two weeks later, I asked my mom if she still had my skates."
For skating career 2.0 she agreed to try pairs, a discipline she had resisted earlier in life despite her small five-foot stature.
In 2019, she teamed up with Canadian Deschamps and moved to Montreal.
They set 2026 as their Olympic debut goal as she knew she would not receive Canadian citizenship in time for the 2022 Games. She became a citizen just over a year ago.
Stellato-Dudek does not romanticise what it has taken to get here.
"It's important to understand that I am almost never not in pain," she said. "I'm sore every day. I'm still sore on Monday from Friday."
The sacrifices have gone beyond the physical. She thought she might want children one day. But she has said that faced with the same choices, she would make them again.
Stellato-Dudek is acutely aware that her age polarises fans. Online criticism, she says, can be relentless — from her face and hair to her body.
Her age, she insists, is not a drawback but an asset.
"I give my age no power," she said. "I think it gives me strength. I've lived a lot of life. I've loved, I've lost — and I can portray those experiences on the ice."
Stellato-Dudek does not skate like an athlete being chased by time. Indeed, her Olympic debut will not be her goodbye.
"I'm not going to stop skating until I have decided that I'm done, regardless of what other people think a female should or should not be doing at a certain age," she told Reuters earlier this season.
"I already left this sport once before my time, so I'm not going to do that again. I will continue to skate until I feel like I have accomplished what I want to accomplish."
(Reporting by Lori EwingEditing by Toby Davis)
