Deanna Stellato-Dudek is having her best year ever in figure skating - 23 years after her senior debut

"Passion has no age limit."

That's the motto of Deanna Stellato-Dudek, who in 2000 was the Junior World silver medallist in women's singles figure skating – and who just last month won her first-ever Grand Prix medal as a pair skater with Maxime Deschamps of Canada.

At age 39.

"You can change careers in your 30s, 40s, 50s,” Stellato-Dudek told Olympics.com in an interview this season while recounting her journey back to figure skating after an unheard-of 16-year hiatus. “Grit, determination... they don't have an age limit, either.”

"You can be successful in that [new] career if it's something that you really have a passion for."

In a sport that has long been dominated by young people in their teens and early- and mid-20s, Stellato-Dudek’s passion is a singular example of the spirit of skating – and what it means to come back to something you love.

In her case, with 16 years between her two "careers."

Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps' silver medal at Skate America 2022 made Deanna the oldest first-time medallist in Grand Prix history. Two weeks later she and Deschamps levelled up - quite literally - capturing gold at Grand Prix de France and stamping their ticket to the exclusive Grand Prix Final in Turin, Italy. They finished fourth there as Stellato-Dudek fought through an illness.

It was Stellato-Dudek's first time at the Final in 23 years: In 1999, she was the Junior Grand Prix Final champion in singles.

This week (13-14 January) she and Deschamps will be among the favourites at the Canadian National Skating Championships in Oshawa, Ontario.

"I get to wake up every day and do something that I love," she said. "I look forward to it. That's the part I want people to pay attention to: Yes, I took a huge chance; made a huge jump. But I am happy every day when I go into work.”

Stellato: Taking the leap – again

Stellato-Dudek was a promising young skater for Team USA in the late 1990s. She was the junior national champion in 1999 and later that year won the aforementioned Junior GPF. A few months later she was a silver medallist at Junior Worlds.

A series of hip injuries limited her training into 2001 before she stepped away from the sport for good at 17, a fractured ankle contributing to her woes.

But it was 16 years later, during a work retreat she was on as part of her job as an aesthetician, that Stellato-Dudek was participating in a team-building activity with colleagues at lunch. The activity’s prompt: What is something you'd do if you knew you couldn't fail?

"I immediately said, 'I would win an Olympic gold medal,'" Stellato-Dudeck recalled. "I was in disbelief of what I had just said. I thought that I had moved on with my life; it had been 16 years. I didn't know that that was still in there."

It turned out it was, so two weeks later Stellato-Dudek asked her mother to grab her skates, which had been sitting in her parents' basement for 16 years. They indeed were dusty. She went to her first session at an open public skate and immediately had her double jumps back.

Three months later she was doing triples again.

It wasn't clear what her path back could be, however, as she had been a singles skater previously. She decided to fly to Florida to get the honest advice of her childhood coach, Cindy Watson-Caprel. When she arrived to Cabrel's rink, Mitch Moyer, Senior Director for Athlete High Performance at U.S. Figure Skating, happened to be visiting.

He suggested pairs – Deanna agreed.

"It was very serendipitous that he was there," Stellato-Dudek said of that day and seeing Moyer in Florida. "This second time around, I had decided not to pass on any suggestion, any opportunity. I decided I wanted to take any opportunity. And that's exactly what I did."

Stellato-Dudek had last competed in the fall of 2000. Sixteen years later she was back.

In three seasons with American Nathan Bartholomay, a 2014 Olympian, Stellato-Dudek showed marked improvements. The team won bronze at both the 2018 and 2019 U.S. Championships, competing at the World Championships in 2018, where they finished 17th.

But the duo ended its partnership in spring of 2019, and a few months later she and Deschamps, a former junior national champion in Canada, unveiled their partnership.

It's been over six years since Stellato-Dudek read that notecard prompt.

"I was scared to pull in for a single Axel," she recalled of her first day back on practice ice. "[Now] I'm medalling at a Grand Prix. I just wouldn't believe it."

Challenges up North

Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps' silver at Skate America to start the Grand Prix season was no fluke. They had won gold at Nebelhorn Trophy, a Challenger Series event, a few weeks prior. In doing so, they had upped their career-best score by some 10 points.

Their success was owed to, they say, a fully-realised off-season and preparation period, something Covid had stripped them of not only in 2020, but 2021 as well.

The duo trains in Montreal, but because Stellato-Dudek's paperwork was still in process to skate for Canada, they were not granted special permissions (as many other elite athletes were) to use practice ice amidst the country's strict pandemic lockdowns.

So they improvised.

"We couldn't skate in the rinks, so we decided to go and skate outside," Deschamps explained. "The ice is not good quality, it's cold out, you have to wear extra jackets. But we decided to work on [elements]" that would function on small patches of ice.

The team's unique outside-edge death spiral (the death spiral is a partner spin in which one partner squats in a standing position, holding the arm of the other partner who is outstretched and parallel to the ice, the two of them spinning in a circle) was born.

"We would do death spirals until our hands were numb," Stellato-Dudek said. "We would run back to the car, watch the video of what we had just done and go back out and try it again."

In the lead-up to the 2022-23 season, however, their preparation has been robust. Julie Marcotte choreographed both of their programs and they got to work into the season just like any other top team. One of which they now are.

“The difference is that we had a real off-season,” Deanna concluded. “Where we could work on our elements in an intricate manner to improve.”

Writing new chapters – together

Stellato-Dudek is Deschamps’ ninth partner, and he, too, has followed his passion for the sport to stay in it, having turned 30 earlier this year.

“I’ve been around for a long time,” said Deschamps, who won Canadian juniors in 2014. “I’ve worked so hard to push forward. I’ve never been able to be where I want with my former partners. To do it now with Deanna, it’s so incredible.”

He continued: “Age is just a number. We have to believe what we want about ourselves. You have to feel like you can still push, like you can still improve. That's how we're able to keep going. I'm super proud to be Deanna's partner; I'm proud to be part of her history.”

The team is also especially proud of their aforementioned death spiral, which is done with the man on a forward outside pivot entry – something that no team has ever tried before. It’s an unusual and more difficult entry.

Stellato-Dudek said it’s one of the small ways they’re trying to leave their mark on the sport.

“Everybody – across the board – wants to be an Olympic or world medallist, but that only can happen to [a handful] of teams,” she said. “But everyone can leave their mark on the sport.”

Some two decades after leaving skating, Stellato-Dudek is back leaving her mark on it again. Just her returning to the ice has done so already, but she wants more.

The team will go after its first national title in Oshawa, having placed third at Canadians last year. Deschamps was a junior national champion with a different partner in 2014. Stellato-Dudek, as mentioned, is some two decades removed from her junior glory days. 

“I definitely have plenty of naysayers who say, 'What is she doing at 39? She can't possibly compete with these kids,'” she said. “I understand what they're saying, but I welcome all the naysayers the same way I welcome my supporters.”

“I had unfinished business” in skating, she added. “I was 33 when I started again, but I’ve always had a strong belief in myself. ... I knew that when I returned to skating that I had the work ethic to be successful. The question was going to be, could I do that under pressure? Because that’s another thing.”

This season – and beyond – Stellato-Dudek is seeing how all of that shapes out. But as she turns 40 later this year (just one other pair female on the international circuit is over the age of 30), her story continues to only get better with age.

Because it’s the story she wants to be writing right now.

“I'm a huge proponent of following your passion,” she said. “Because no matter what, it will lead you to internal happiness and fulfillment.”