Canada places 5th in figure skating team event; U.S. successfully defends gold

Canada missed the podium after finishing fifth in the figure skating team event on Sunday.

After three days of competition at the Milano Skating Arena, skaters Piper Gilles, Paul Poirier, Lia Pereira, Trennt Michaud, Marjorie Lajoie, Zachary Lagha, Madeline Schizas and Stephen Gogolev accumulated 54 points overall.

The defending champion United States repeated with gold after amassing 69 points — one point ahead of silver medallist Japan.

Italy took bronze with 60 points, its first medal in the team event since its inaugural appearance at the Winter Games in 2018.

Pereira and Michaud set season’s best

The final day of the team event began with the pairs skating free program.

Canadians Lia Pereira and Trennt Michaud — replacing Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps who dropped out of team event due to injury — skated to a rendition of the Gladiator soundtrack by Hans Zimmer.

Their score of 134.42 was a season’s best and put them fifth in the pairs segment.

“We’re happy that we were able to put out a skate like that. The Americans laid out a really great performance ahead of us. We laid it down as well, so we’re very proud of that,” Pereira told reporters Sunday.

“We wanted to lay it down and do what we could control. We knew that if we did what we could, we would be satisfied, and that could be helpful for the team,” Michaud said.

The big performance in pairs skating came from the reigning world champions Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara, who delivered a season-best score of 155.55 points to place first in the event.

The Japanese duo, who also skated to the Gladiator soundtrack, currently train in Oakville Ont.

Canada’s fall from medal contention

In the women’s singles event, Canada’s Madeline Schizas was first to skate her free program, performing to Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto.

The Oakville, Ont., native made headlines last week after posting her email request for an assignment extension to her professor at McMaster University — which she received.

Schizas fell on a triple lutz, the first jump of her performance. She recovered to finish a clean program and put up a score of 125 points with a one point deduction, placing fifth overall in the event.

Schizas told reporters she was “a little surprised” by the fall, but happy with how she came back, showing “resilience.”

“I shook it off and kept going. It’s easy to crumble, and I was really happy with the way I came back with a triple flip and just skated through the rest of the program the way I do in practice,” she said.

Japan’s Kaori Sakamoto put up the biggest score in the women’s free program with 148.62 points, placing first and tying the U.S. for points before the men’s free program.

Milano Cortina 2026 mark Sakamoto’s final competition before she is set to retire from the sport.

Following the women’s free programs, Canada was in fifth place, falling out of medal contention, while Japan led the U.S. in a tie-breaker for first place at 59 points each.

Coming off a career best performance in the short program on Saturday, Olympic rookie Stephen Gogolev skated to Piano Concerto No. 2 by Sergei Rachmaninov. 

While not in a position to medal, Gogolev’s performance placed him fourth in the men’s free program segment, earning a season-best score of 171.93 points.

The fight for the gold medal came down to men’s singles skaters Ilia Malinin from the U.S. and Sato Shun from Japan.

Malinin, who holds the world record for the highest score in a men’s free program with 238.24 points, recovered from a stumble on a quad jump, landing a one-footed back flip to win USA the gold medal with a score of 200.03.

Sato, who skated after Malinin, skated a clean program to a classical rendition of The Firebird by Igor Stravinsky, scoring 194.86 points — a season’s best — but was six points short of overtaking Malinin for gold.