By Lynn Rutherford
This winter, after watching Ilia Malinin and Adam Siao Him Fa ignite crowds with their aerial moves, Deanna Stellato-Dudek had an idea.
“I thought, ‘They’ve legalized this backflip in the ISU, but only Ilia and Adam are doing it. That’s it. No ladies, no pairs, no dance,’” she remembers. “So, why don’t we do a backflip for pairs and make it a pair element? And we could be the first pair team to ever do this backflip, now that it’s legal.”
But how would it work? The daredevil Stellato-Dudek had a few thoughts, but first, she had to convince her partner, Maxime Deschamps, to make the leap.
“Initially, I wanted to jump off of Max’s shoulders, and he vetoed that,” she says. “Then I wanted to jump off of his back, and he vetoed that.”
Cut to Deschamps, who smiles and shakes his head.
“And then I saw a video of a son and father in their living room doing (the backflip) this way,” she continues, referring to one partner grasping the others’ right foot with both hands and tossing that partner backwards. “There would be a lot of space between us, so there’s no risk of my blade hitting his face. And so I said, ‘Well, let’s try this.’”
The skaters reached out to fellow Quebecer Rose-Kaying Woo, a member of Canada’s 2016 Olympic gymnastics team, to help them perfect the move on the floor.
“It worked on day one, so I was like, ‘Let’s bring our skates back,’ and we went to the gymnasium with our skates,” Stellato-Dudek says. “Doing it with skates is different. He has to grab underneath — not under my blade, but under my boot. So we tried in the gymnasium with skates on, and then we brought a mat from the gymnasium to the arena and tried it that way. And then finally, we tried it with no mat at all.”
The three-time Canadian champions, who won the world title in 2024, debuted the new move in their “Carmina Burana” short program at the John Nicks Pairs Challenge International, held in New York City Sept. 2-3. It went off without a hitch, and despite Stellato’s miss on a triple toe loop, they won the short with 70.77 points.
The pair’s free skate, set to music by Spanish guitarist Vicente Amigo, didn’t feature a backflip, but opened with a big Level 4 triple twist and closed with back-to-back dramatic lifts to earn 128.66 points. Both programs were choreographed by Lori Nichol.
Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps won the event with 199.43 points, some 5.89 points over U.S. champions Alisa Efimova and Misha Mitrofanov. U.S. silver medalists Katie McBeath and Daniil Parkman were third with 187.89 points.
“You see it with Ilia and Adam — they’re innovating, right? With the raspberry and all this kind of thing,” Stellato-Dudek says. “And so we’re trying to do the same in pairs. Why can’t we have stuff?”
Maybe it’s an idea that’s catching, because Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps were not the only pair to try a backflip at the Nicks Challenge: U.S. competitor Keyton Bearinger, who partners Linzy Fitzpatrick, did a solo backflip in the free skate.
Now that the backflip is part of their repertoire, Deschamps agrees that it injects a dash of excitement, especially since it is incorporated into the step sequence, an element that can sometimes look a bit labored.
“Really, it’s going to bring something new to the step sequence,” he says. “The step sequence is long, so to be able to have something that’s really exciting, that’s going to help to create new momentum.”
Veteran coach Josee Picard, who trains the skaters in Montreal, has also been won over.
“At first, I wanted to see how solid it would be, because it’s far into the program — it’s not right up at the beginning,” Picard says. “And you know, it depended how their training went, if they were going to be in shape enough to do it. The short program is only about six weeks old. We were supposed to put (the backflip) out only in October, but because they were doing so well with it, I said, ‘Okay, let’s do it here.’”
Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps were disappointed with their fifth-place finish at the 2025 World Figure Skating Championships, held in Boston this March. But with the Milano Cortino Games fast approaching, they think they righted the ship this summer.
“We have been working super hard,” Deschamps says. “We had a good off-season compared to the year before, when we went on tour. This year we really had time to work. It’s core stuff, and that’s where we shine. We have been working well. It was a fun summer on top of it, and we feel more ready than ever.”