Deanna Stellato-Dudek discusses new ‘Deanna’s Dream’ documentary on Olympics.com podcast: “This story is way bigger” than me – exclusive
A Turin 2006 dream – 20 years later
There’s a scene in Part 2 of Deanna’s Dream that places her and Maxime at the 2025 Four Continents Championships, where the team needed a sterling free skate to nab the silver medal.
The documentary highlights the pressures they’ve faced since being world champions.
“We need to keep this freedom… this reckless abandon” in our skating, Deanna tells Max over cups of coffee. “No more careful; attack and free,” she concludes.
“This is obviously my second chance at this sport,” she explained on the podcast. “So many stars had to align, so many serendipitous occasions had to occur in order for me to even be sitting in this seat talking to you right now. And I just feel like I owe it to my younger self and to my current self to do absolutely everything I can, put all my chips on the table, like full throttle… You know, I owe it. To myself and I owe it to this dream to do that.”
Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps are set to compete at this weekend’s Canadian Championships, where the team is eyeing a fourth national title – as well as that aforementioned Olympic berth.
It’s an Olympic dream that Deanna first had for Salt Lake City 2002 and then Turin 2006 – before retiring a first time.
“I wanted to go to those 2002 Olympics, but it was going to be between me and Sasha Cohen, because for sure Michelle Kwan and Sarah Hughes were going to going there,” she remembered.
“The realistic goal for me would have been the 2006 Olympics, which ironically were also in Italy,” she added. “So it’s very crazy that 20 years later I am going back to the country that I would have most likely been attending the Olympics had I have stayed as a singles skater. What I want to experience the most is seeing the Olympic rings on the ice… the Olympic rings everywhere.”
Having first been apprehensive about the documentary project, she now says it’s a chapter in her story that she’ll have forever – one she hopes ends with that Olympic dream – and perhaps even an Olympic podium.
It’s a story she’s proud resonates the way that it does – for so many around the globe.
“It’s about watching somebody do something just totally legendary,” she said, smiling. “And then taking that inspiration and applying it to your own life in whatever way makes sense for you.
“That’s really what I think the nexus of Max and my story is about: It’s like we made this work for us in a very unconventional way. And that’s really what we hope to other people get from this is that, you know, ‘You can do it too!’ If we can do this, you can do whatever it is you’re thinking of doing.”
