Silver for Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps in 2024-2025 Season Debut

Oberstdorf, GER (September 21, 2024) – Reigning pairs world champions Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps made their 2024-2025 season debut this weekend at the Challenger Series Nebelhorn Trophy in Oberstdorf, Germany and showed they are on course for another great season, bringing home silver for Canada.

Stellato-Dudek of Chicago, USA, and Deschamps of Vaudreuil-Dorion, Que., debuted two new programs – their short program, which features a remix of Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love” garnered them third-place scores (72.42), while their new free program, set to a medley of songs, pushed them up into second (133.82), for a total overall score of 206.42 to start off the season.

“We’re started the season pretty late because we had a lot of shows last spring, so it was a new preparation for us this year,” said Deschamps who together with Stellato-Dudek participated in the Stars on Ice tour in Japan and Canada from late March to May following their World Championships win in Montreal. “This is where we’re at for this time of the year, and we’re really pleased with what we did here.”

Lia Pereira of Milton, Ont., and Trennt Michaud of Brantford, Ont., skated a beautiful free program to post third-place scores, but finished the competition ranked fifth overall (176.28) after finishing seventh in the short program. Minerva Fabienne Hase and Nikita Volodin, bronze medallists at the 2024 World Championships, won gold with a total score of 218.44, while Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea of the USA captured bronze (184.38).

In the men’s competition, Roman Sadovsky of Vaughan, Ont., showed a return to form after injury and travel mishaps hampered his efforts last season. Debuting a new free program to the soundtrack from “Interstellar”, Sadovsky nailed all his jumps, and just had a small stumble following one of his spins to post the fourth-best score of the day. He finished the competition ranked fifth overall with a total score of 225.24.

“My short program wasn’t what I was doing in practice so I was disappointed I couldn’t reproduce what I was doing in practice, but I was glad that I was able to turn it around for the long program. It had a few small things here and there that I’d like to improve, but I’m looking forward to the next event,” said Sadovsky.

Wesley Chiu of Vancouver, B.C., the reigning Canadian men’s champion, had a strong skate in his short program to sit sixth overall, but had a hard time with his free program, dropping him to finish 14th overall with a total score of 189.77.

Sota Yamamoto of Japan won gold (262.72), while Gabriele Frangipani of Italy captured silver (246.11), and Deniss Vasiljevs of Latvia took bronze (235.72).

Sara-Maude Dupuis of Montreal, Que., skated a fantastic short program on the first day of the women’s competition that had her sitting in fourth heading into the free program on Saturday. She couldn’t duplicate that effort in her free program however and ended the competition ranked 9th overall with a total score of 166.31.

Madeline Schizas of Oakville, Ont., finished just ahead of Dupuis in seventh with a total score of 172.22.

American skaters took the top two spots on the podium with Elyce Lin-Gracey winning gold (213.33) and Isabeau Levito taking silver (198.13). Yoshida Hana of Japan rounded out the podium, taking bronze (196.47).

The next stop on the Challenger Series Circuit is the Denis Ten Memorial taking place in Astana, Kazakhstan from October 3-6, 2024.

For full results please click here.