Olympic pair skating existed before the Winter Games were invented in 1924. Since then, the runners have continuously come up with the most interesting tricks in a duet on black ice – first on the ground and later in the air. The most recent idea comes from the Canadian duo Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps: They recently performed a backflip. To be more precise, Deschamps catapulted his partner from a standing position into the flight path. It is now debatable what was the most amazing thing about this world premiere in competition: that Stellato-Dudek did not accidentally catch his companion’s nose at the Grand Prix opener in Angers; or that she managed the premiere without an accident at the age of 42. In any case, her enthusiasm is undiminished: Originally she had even wanted to jump off his shoulder during the somersault – Deschamps, 34, was just able to talk her out of this breakneck risk, she said with amusement.
The Canadians Stellato-Dudek/Deschamps were pair skating world champions in 2024. Their salto mortale provides the unmistakable indication that figure skating, the great theater of sport, is experiencing a special season like every four years. The Olympic season has begun, the season of rehearsed spectacles in which there are more capers than usual on the calendar.
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When the European champions from Berlin, Minerva Hase and Nikita Volodin, enter the Grand Prix series at the traditional Skate Canada tournament this weekend, they will meet Stellato-Dudek/Deschamps in Saskatoon. Not that the somersault would earn the Canadians particularly many points: it is not a registered, certified element. The main reason why they included him in the program is probably because he hasn’t been banned since last season. When the fabulous Frenchwoman Surya Bonaly – the only woman whose backflip Stellato-Dudek remembers – performed the feat in her solo routine at the Nagano Winter Games in 1998, she still had to expect points to be deducted. But skid theater in front of an audience and jurors is always about creativity. And about the coolly calculated surprise effect.
In this regard, the Chinese association has achieved its biggest coup to date. Last week he conjured up Olympic champions Sui Wenjing and Han Cong at the Cup of China in Chongqing, the second Grand Prix of the winter. The astonishment was actually as great as if one had spotted white rabbits or white dolphins in the megacity on the Yangtze. Even colleagues like Annika Hocke and Robert Kunkel, the second top German pair, were amazed when they saw Sui and Han with a large entourage in the training hall in Chongqing.
Because Sui/Han had not appeared at competitions since February 2020, when they were decorated with gold in Beijing. There were rumors of a comeback by the two-time world champions from Harbin, who have been skating hand in hand on the ice since 2007. But Han, now 33, had taken a job as a university teacher and had gained ten kilograms in weight, as the world association ISU reported. Sui, 30, meanwhile tried pair skating with other partners, with moderate success. In September, when a place for China had to be secured in the Olympic qualification for the 2026 Winter Games in Milan in February, officials entrusted the national task to a younger duo.
“We were surprised that they ran with us,” Robert Kunkel said on Wednesday after returning from Chongqing. Neither the Hocke/Kunkel duo nor the audience noticed that the Olympic champions’ jumps and artistic lifts were still a little lacking in confidence after the long break. They still came third, and Sui immediately sent a little warning to the world’s elite ahead of the Winter Games: “No athlete doesn’t want to win, and we’re definitely aiming for the gold medal,” she explained. After all, being competitive again after such a short practice period is motivation enough.
Annika Hocke, 25, and Robert Kunkel, 26, the third place in the 2023 European Championships, came sixth in the competition this time; they are also still missing a routine after a shocking ice accident and the resulting loss of training for weeks. At the end of July they fell and fell so badly that the razor-sharp edges of Annika Hocke’s ice skates slashed both of Kunkel’s hands. A skin transplant was necessary. Now he only feels a “minimal restriction of mobility,” says Kunkel, but more in everyday life and not on the ice, when he carries and holds his partner with his hands during complicated lifts. They have now noticed a further increase in performance at the competition in China. And almost at the same time, I mastered the Olympic requirements of the German Ice Skating Union on points. The DEU’s sports director, Jens ter Laak, was also, as he said, “very positively surprised” by her appearance after the shocking history.
In China, the young Georgian couple Metelkina/Berulava leaves the elite behind
The audience has so far been fascinated by the capers and spectacular effects of the ice theater season, by the somersault Canadians or the comeback Chinese. Some surprises, however, develop almost silently. The pair skating experts, for example, are impressed by the cool sovereignty that the young Georgian couple Anastasija Metelkina and Luka Berulava are currently celebrating on the ice. Metelkina/Berulava were junior world champions twice and also European Championship medalists among seniors in the same year. They are now leaving competition behind in China too. The Japanese world champions Miura/Kihara, the World Cup third-placed Conti/Macii from Italy and the World Cup second-placed Minerva Hase/Nikita Volodin are also very popular. DEU sports director ter Laak sees a “very close density” among the world’s best: “There are four or five top couples who are almost on par.”
In the past two years, the highlights of the Grand Prix series have been brought to the ice by the European champions Minerva Hase and Nikita Volodin, who train in Berlin and who triumphed twice in the final. After two smaller competitions, the curtain is now rising for them in Canada. But they also quietly worked out the conditions for their Olympic season. For example, Nikita Volodin, born in St. Petersburg, passed the naturalization test. Without any drum roll.