Madison Hubbell: “I really want to do a project with Gabriella Papadakis and show what two women skating together can look like.” Madison Hubbell
The Canadian Figure Skating Federation has changed the definition of a “team” in pair skating and ice dance. Here’s a comment from Madison Hubbell that she made in a big interview with Russian media.
source: Skatingoutloud Telegram channel by Maya Bagriantseva
“The previous definition of ‘team’ was one woman and one man. That definition was inconsistent with Skate Canada’s vision of Skating for Everyone and Skate Canada’s commitment to non-discrimination, including non-discrimination based on gender identity. The Podium Pathway definition of ‘team’ will be revised to ‘a team consists of two skaters’.
Allowing any two skaters to compete through the Podium Pathway will have a significant impact on the sport development in both the pair and ice dance disciplines. This update will allow skaters to move forward with further achievements and competitive successes through the Skating to Win strategic imperative.” Skate Canada
Before this news appeared, Madison Hubbell, in an interview with Russian media, touched a bit on this topic, and her comment and perception of such changes might be very interesting.
Madison Hubbell: I hope to do many years of shows, and right now I am enjoying different projects. I really, really want to do a project with Gabriella (Papadakis) and show what two women skating together can look like.
We are both very affectionate and touchy people in general, so as we were friends, we were always hugging and hanging on each other, and we used a lot of physical contact as our supporting mechanism on the ice. I think we are naturally having Yin and Yang in our styles of skating, and we always wanted to do something together. Often we are not invited to the same shows, and we were saying that maybe if we made a really cool program together we would be invited to the same ice shows and we would spend more time together. (laughs)
Of course, it’s only one aspect of this, but we are both very excited about this initiative to have a non-gendered event, more than creating a female-female event or male-male and then mixed. We think that everyone should be allowed to compete with everyone. It’s hard to imagine that without seeing it, right? And who better than two athletes who just retired so they are not completely out of it, not completely out of shape could do it? And we have an amazing team around! We skated together in spring; Gabi came to London for 3 days, and we skated and filmed it. So many things worked really easily right away: transitions, skating skills, twizzles, one-foot, footworks, to track each other close – all have been really easy for both of us.
But obviously lifts and tricks – things that we are used to do in one part of it – we have to learn how to be the base or to do a slightly different skillset. So we are very lucky to have Mimi and Seb (Cirque du Soleil acrobats working with the I.Am academy), and they don’t see any issue here. So often, acrobatic partners are almost the same size and height, so it’s all about leverage and technique.
But the main thing for us now is: when do we have time for it? When do we head for Montreal to train together? We don’t know yet if it is gonna be a video or a performance, but people have to see it. There are so many solo girls that want to do ice dance. And so many that spend years and years searching for a right guy, and I am sick of them sitting there searching. They need to find a way to perform, explore, express themselves, and share what they love about the sports. What would be a better way for two women than to skate together?
But many of them are not used to the idea; they have not seen it, and for them, it’s almost like a lower tier. If I skate with a woman, maybe it means that I will never find a boy; it’s almost like admitting the fact that they might never be in competitive ice dance, which is too much to take on. We want to show them that there is no difference and that you can create amazing things – maybe even more amazing than what we are used to see.
Related topics: Gabriella Papadakis Guillaume Cizeron, Madison Hubbell Zachary Donohue
Looking forward to that. Since the times of Anisina / Peizerat I’m still waiting for something new in ice dancing. With all due respect for all the dancers.
Cool, I would love to see Madison and Gabriel skating together!!