The Milano Olympics for Madeline Schizas may be remembered for a school assignment more than anything she did on the ice.
Schizas, the Canadian figure skater, went viral in Italy over a public request for an extension on a sociology paper — with the very understandable reason that she was, indeed, competing in the Olympics.
The light-hearted saga blew up on social media. It still follows Schizas as a new season begins.
“I mean, I’m a little sick of it,” Schizas admitted. “That was a lot.”
Now, the 23-year-old is looking to take back her story. With the pressure and expectations of the Olympics — where she helped Canada finish fifth in the team event but failed to even qualify for the free dance as an individual — behind her, Schizas’ goal for this season is simple: joy.
“Especially with the pressure [of the] Olympics, there’s a lot of cooks in the kitchen trying to tell you what to do,” Schizas said. “I think that this season has been just one where we’ve said, ‘OK, enough of this.’ Like, let’s really just make the decisions that we feel are the correct ones as opposed to the decisions we feel might appease other people.”
Schizas’ Grand Prix season gets underway Friday at the Skate Canada International in Kelowna, B.C., the second stop of the year. Live coverage on CBC Gem and CBCSports.ca begins at 9 p.m. ET / 6 p.m. PT.
The Oakville, Ont., native will skate her short program to the Benny Goodman classic Sing, Sing, Sing, which coach Nancy Lemaire said was a specific choice after Schizas also performed to the song when she was just six.
“She always had opinions about the type of music she wanted to skate to, the energy that she wanted to have in the program,” said Lemaire, who has guided Schizas throughout her figure-skating journey.
“She’s developed over the years into having a very good understanding of the skating world and sort of what is received better by judges in terms of music and style and things like that. And she has worked to hone those skills as opposed to just being the wild and crazy kid that she was when she was six.”
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One thing that has not left Schizas, however, is her individuality — a trait that will be on full display on the ice this season, just as it is seen every day on TikTok and Instagram, where she documents the life of a figure skater and her camera-reluctant coach.
Besides, this could be the four-time Canadian champion and two-time Olympian Schizas’ final year of competition, she said. So she may as well have fun while doing it.
“I knew I didn’t want to leave my career, whether this is my final season or not, on a season that was kind of stressful and had so much going on. I kind of wanted to take a year to do things my own way,” Schizas said.
The decision to take further control comes at a good time, too, as the International Skating Union adjusts the judging guidelines to tilt the balance a little more toward the performance aspect of the sport and a little away from the technical side.
Schizas and Lemaire agreed that the rule changes should only benefit the Canadian.
“To have one less jump is a little bit of an advantage, I think for us. It’s the same length. So you have a little bit more time maybe to perform your program as opposed to just going from element to element. So for someone who really enjoys performance and working on the choreography part of it, that is an advantage for sure,” Lemaire said.
Still, Lemaire said she’ll be paying attention to the quality of Schizas’ spins as a key takeaway from her Grand Prix opener.
The return of Russians to competition this season will be another challenge. Schizas competed at the Budapest Trophy, a Challenger Series event, earlier in October, placing 11th as Russian Alina Gorbacheva cruised to victory.
However, Schizas will also have one less distraction: she graduated from McMaster in June. Outside of her own training and competition, she’s taken on some coaching and revamped her workout plan to include more flexibility and less lifting.
“These are the kind of conversations you have once they hit a certain level. And she’s always been autonomous with those decisions. And we make what we think are appropriate decisions in the moment for where she is in terms of her training and comfort level,” Lemaire said.
With the Olympics behind her, Schizas can turn her attention to other things in her life. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press)
So, yes, the only extensions she’ll have to worry about this season will come in the yoga and pilates studios.
As Schizas pursues new hobbies, she tried golf: “I was so bad. It was embarrassing.”
Instead, she returned to her longtime comfort zone of knitting, something she said she picked up from her grandmother. Her first project? A “really complicated” sweater.
“Why I took this on as my first project I have no idea. But it was like a really fancy sweater and it had a diagonal button opening and it took forever. But really proud of that one,” she said.
Like a university paper that she is scrambling to complete on time, an unnecessarily difficult knitting project helped Schizas keep her mind off the pressure that came with her standing as the top Canadian women’s skater over the past two Olympic cycles.
Now, school is done and coaching may replace it, but the goals both on the ice and off have merged into one: just have fun.
“She’s always had to carry not the burden, but the privilege of representing the country — but under the microscope, let’s say, of the skating fans,” Lemaire said. “So I think this year she’s really trying to say, ‘I’m just doing this with no microscope. This is me, I am skating for myself, for my family, for my friends, for my coaching staff.’”
