"Passion has no age limit" - 39-year-old Deanna Stellato-Dudek on returning to pair skating after 16-year hiatus
American pair skater Deanna Stellato-Dudek presently competes for Canada alongside Maxime Deschamps. She earned the Junior World silver medal in women's singles figure skating in 2000. Further, she and Canadian Maxime Deschamps won their first-ever Grand Prix medal last month.
Deanna stepped away from skating in 2000 due to injury woes. But she is now returning and making another impact. Even her simple return to the ice has had this effect, but she wants more. Deanna Stellato-Dudek lives by the slogan,
"Passion has no age limit."
Deanna Stellato-Dudek return to pair skating after 16-year hiatus
Deanna is a unique illustration of the spirit of skating and what it means to return to something you love in a sport that has traditionally been dominated by young athletes in their teens and early to mid-20s.
In 2016, Deanna Stellato-Dudek returned to competitive pair skating after 16 years. Since then, she has not looked back.
Deanna became the oldest first-time medalist in Grand Prix history thanks to her and Deschamps' silver medal at Skate America 2022. Two weeks later, she and Deschamps advanced significantly, winning gold at the Grand Prix de France and securing their spots in the prestigious Grand Prix Final scheduled for next month in Turin, Italy.
Deanna has already competed in the Finals, wherein she won the Junior Grand Prix in singles in 1999.
The silver medal Deanna and Deschamps won at Skate America last month was no accident. A few weeks earlier, they had won gold in the Challenger Series competition known as the Nebelhorn Trophy. There, they added almost 10 points to their personal best score.
They claimed that their success was due to a completely realized off-season and preparation time, which COVID had deprived them of in both 2020 and 2021.
The pair practiced in Montreal, but despite the stringent pandemic lockdowns throughout the nation, they were not given special authorization to use the ice because Stellato-Dudek's paperwork to skate for Canada was still being processed.
Who is Deanna Stellato-Dudek
Deanna was born in Park Ridge, Illinois, on June 22, 1983. She is a certified aesthetician and expert in permanent cosmetics.
She requested that her mother get her skates, which had been languishing in her parents' basement for 16 years, two weeks after it was discovered. She attended her first session at a public skating rink and her double leaps returned right away.
In the late 1990s, Deanna Stellato-Dudek was a bright young skater for Team USA. She won the aforementioned Junior GPF in addition to being the junior national champion in 1999. She won a silver medal in the Junior Worlds a few months later.
She was unable to train until 2001 due to a string of hip ailments, and at the age of 17, after suffering an ankle fracture, and officially quit the sport.
But it was not until 16 years later, when Deanna was taking a professional retreat as part of her employment as an aesthetician, that she was engaging in a lunchtime team-building exercise with coworkers.
Deanna Stellato-Dudek made significant progress over the course of three seasons with 2014 Olympian Nathan Bartholomay from the United States. The group placed third on three Challenger Series podiums from 2018 to 2019, winning bronze in the U.S. Championships in both 2018 and 2019.