Team Canada figure skaters “excited” for special experience of Olympic team event
Team Canada’s lineup for the first phase of the figure skating team event at Milano Cortina 2026 has been officially announced.
Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier will get things going on Friday in the rhythm dance, which will be followed by Lia Pereira and Trennt Michaud in the pairs’ short program and Madeline Schizas in the women’s short program. Stephen Gogolev will skate in the men’s short program when that takes place on Saturday.
“We’re very excited. It’s something special when you get to go to the Olympics, in general, and skate in your own event but being able to do it as part of the team, I think it adds another level of specialness to it,” said Michaud. “We’re really excited to not only fight for ourselves but fight for everybody else in the team event. To be able to skate more than just twice at the Olympics is just cool.”
“I’m really excited to compete alongside my Canadian teammates. I love competing as part of Team Canada and even more so when I know that we’re all relying on each other to produce our best result,” said Schizas.
After that men’s short program, the field of 10 teams will be cut to the five who will compete in the free skates. Only then will the entries for the second phase of the team event be confirmed. The free dances will also be held on Saturday, followed by the free skates for the pairs, women, and men on Sunday, which will conclude the team event.
Because they are Canada’s lone singles entries at Milano Cortina 2026, Schizas and Gogolev would have to compete in the free skates. It’s also known that Pereira and Michaud would do the pairs free skate. It was previously confirmed that 2024 World champions Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps would not be competing in the team event following an injury Stellato-Dudek sustained in a training accident at their home base in Montreal.
This is the fourth Olympic Winter Games to include a figure skating team event. Canada won silver at Sochi 2014, followed by the memorable gold medal at PyeongChang 2018. Canada was a controversial fourth at Beijing 2022, which was marred by the doping violation by Kamila Valieva of the Russian Olympic Committee.
The only Canadian skaters in Milan who were part of the Beijing team event are Gilles and Poirier as well as Schizas, who noted a lot has changed over the last four years.
“I have a lot more experience going into this team event. At the last Games I was only 18 and I had only competed on a big stage maybe one time before. I come in with much more experience and I’m excited to act as a leader on our team,” said Schizas.
At their first Olympic Games, Michaud says he and Pereira have been enjoying the “business as usual” part of being at a competition, but also the unique aspects of the biggest stage in their sport.
“We feel really calm, in a good way. There’s so much going on here but we feel like we belong. It feels a little bit like a normal competition, in a sense, with lots of extra things,” said Michaud. “It was very special yesterday on our first practice getting to skate over the rings and seeing the Olympic rink for the first time. But we’re feeling confident and excited to perform this week.”
The other countries that qualified for the team event are the United States, Japan, Italy, Georgia, France, Great Britain, South Korea, China, and Poland. Teams needed to have qualified skaters in at least three of the four disciplines to be eligible for the team event
Teams are allowed to split up to two disciplines between the short programs and the free skates, provided they have multiple entries qualified in those disciplines.
While the scoring for each program is done in the same way as at every other competition, the rankings in the team event are based on points for placement. In the short program, the top skater/duo in each discipline is awarded 10 points, number two gets nine points, all the way down to one point for the 10th-placed skater/duo.
In the free skates, the winning skater/duo again receives 10 points, with nine, eight, seven, and six points awarded down the rankings. Placement points from all eight programs are added together for a team total.
