World pairs’ figure skating champions Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps will miss this week’s Grand Prix Final as Deschamps recovers from illness.
Stellato-Dudek, a 41-year-old who spent 15 years retired, and Deschamps were going to be the top seed at the Final, which takes the top six per discipline from the six-event Grand Prix regular season in October and November.
The Final is the most exclusive event in figure skating and often a preview of the following March’s world championships.
Italians Rebecca Ghilardi and Filippo Ambrosini are next in line to take the Canadians’ place in the six-pair field in Grenoble, France.
Though Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps were the only pair to win both of their Grand Prix regular season starts, two other pairs had higher scores in both of their starts: 2023 World champions Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara of Japan and 2023 Grand Prix Final winners Minerva Fabienne Hase and Nikita Volodin of Germany.
U.S. champions Ellie Kam and Danny O’Shea also qualified for their first Final as the original sixth seed.
Stellato-Dudek, a 2000 World Junior Championships silver medalist in singles for the U.S., and Deschamps began skating together in 2019. Deschamps reportedly had eight different partners before teaming with Stellato-Dudek.
They placed fourth in their first world championships together in 2023, then won the title last March in Montreal.
