Winnipeg pair fourth at Canadian figure skating championship

Before the 2026 Canadian figure skating championships concluded on Sunday in Gatineau, Que., and Skate Canada announced its Olympic Winter Games team, Winnipeg pair skaters Ava Kemp and Yohnatan Elizarov were on the road back to their training base in Toronto.

With their satisfying fourth-place result on Saturday in the rear-view mirror, the duo turned their attention from their senior nationals debut to competing in their first ISU senior championship next week in China.

Kemp, 17, and Elizarov, 22, will squeeze in five days of training before flying to Beijing next Monday for Four Continents — a competition for top athletes from Asia, the Americas, Oceania and Africa.

China’s 2022 Olympic pair champions Wenjing Sui and Cong Han are slated to compete in Beijing before making their second bid for Games gold in Milan-Cortina.

Also headed to Italy are Canada’s 2024 world titleholders Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps and newly crowned national champions Lia Pereira and Trennt Michaud.

While those assignments were expected, the shocking turn of events in Gatineau was not.

Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps relinquished their national crown to Pereira and Michaud on Saturday after struggling through a devastating, error-strewn free program that ranked third-best. That relegated them to second place overall with a total score of 201.36. Pereira and Michaud tallied 204.14.

Kelly Ann Laurin and Loucas Ethier overtook Kemp and Elizarov for bronze (197.41) with a superb performance that earned a standing ovation from the sell-out crowd at Centre Slush Puppie.

Elizarov said late Saturday night that they really didn’t expect to medal in Gatineau knowing their rivals’ abilities. Their goal was to gain experience in senior company and enjoy skating for the large, boisterous crowd.

The two were pleased to be awarded higher difficulty levels on some elements and score a personal best 120.34 in the freeskate, 186.19 overall.

Skate Canada will officially announce the full Four Continents team, as well as assignments to the junior and senior world championships, on Monday.

Word is that Kemp and Elizarov will be wearing the Maple Leaf at junior worlds in Estonia in early March while Laurin and Ethier will likely join them in Beijing.

Meanwhile, the lone Olympic berths for Canada’s men’s and women’s skaters were awarded to this weekend’s gold medallists Stephen Gogolev and Madeline Schizas.

Gogolev, 21, punched his ticket by clinching his first Canadian title with two impressive performances that saw him finish 20 points clear of the rest of the field, including fellow Olympic team hopeful and two-time Canadian champion Roman Sadovsky.

Sadvosky, fourth in the opener after a costly fall, rebounded with a strong free program to climb into silver medal position (255.10), but the 18-point advantage Gogolev held thanks to his stellar short program skate was impossible to overcome. Gogolev totalled 275.50.

“It feels a bit unreal. It hasn’t sunken in yet. Obviously, the performance wasn’t perfect, but I’m pretty satisfied,” Gogolev said.

“Today, I definitely felt quite a bit more pressure probably because this was the final moment, the deciding point for who’s going to Milano.”

In 2019 at age 15, Gogolev grabbed the silver medal in his first year in senior competition, but an ensuing growth spurt and recurring back injuries prevented him from replicating his earlier success.

“The past couple of years have been quite a struggle for me and coming back this season is very special. There were definitely a lot of doubts in my mind the past few years. There were even times when I thought it’s not worth continuing doing because there was year after year that I was not able to compete the way I wanted to, or even compete at all. So I’m very, very thankful and happy to be here,” Gogolev said.

In his debut in senior competition and on the rebound from injury, Winnipegger David Howes ranked 17th in the 18-man field on 178.48 points.

In the women’s final on Sunday, now four-time Canadian champion Madeline Schizas, 22, delivered one of the finest performances of her career to rise from fourth place in the opener to the top of the standings (200.96).

That was enough to convince the decision-makers to send Schizas to her second Olympic Games. She finished 18th in 2022 in Beijing.

Gabrielle Daleman, who won Olympic gold in the team event at the 2018 Olympic Games as a member of Canada’s “dream” team, fell just short of her quest for a third Olympic assignment, settling for the silver medal (195.35).

Daleman, 26, will likely be considered for the Four Continents team as will Sadovsky.

Dauphin’s Breken Brezden, fifth at the 2025 Canadian championships, ranked 12th (162.21) this time around after knee injuries thwarted her training for three months last fall.

“I’m pretty proud of myself to push through all that and get myself back on track as quickly as I did. So coming here and accomplishing what I did, feels pretty good,” Brezden said.

Veteran ice dancers Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier were the final competitors to take the ice in Gatineau. The reigning two-time world silver medallists handily won their fifth national title and are considered Canada’s best hope for an Olympic figure skating medal.

Gilles and Poirier were the first skaters invited to don the burgundy Canada Olympic team jacket when the team was announced a few hours later, followed by national silver and bronze medallists, Marjorie Lajoie and Zachary Lagha and Marie-Jade Lauriault and Romain LeGac.

The Olympic figure skating competition begins Feb. 6.