The second event of the 2023-2024 Grand Prix season is Skate Canada International, taking place at Oct. 27-29, 2023 at the Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Figure Skaters Online will be covering Skate Canada International. Check back for our coverage on the event.
Entries
| Men | Women | Pairs | Dance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wesley Chiu (CAN) | Sara-Maude Dupuis (CAN) | Anastasia Golubeva / Hektor Giotopoulos Moore (AUS) | Alicia Fabbri / Paul Ayer (CAN) |
| Conrad Orzel (CAN) | Kaiya Ruiter (CAN) | Kelly Ann Laurin / Loucas Éthier (CAN) | Piper Gilles / Paul Poirier (CAN) |
| Aleksa Rakic (CAN) | Madeline Schizas (CAN) | Brooke McIntosh / Benjamin Mimar (CAN) | Molly Lanaghan / Dmitre Razgulajevs (CAN) |
| Mihhail Selevko (EST) | Mae Berenice Meite (FRA) | Deanna Stellato-Dudek / Maxime Deschamps (CAN) | Shiyue Wang / Xinyu Liu (CHN) |
| Mark Gorodnitsky (ISR) | Lara Naki Gutmann (ITA) | Letizia Roscher / Luis Schuster (GER) | Jennifer Janse van Rensburg / Benjamin Steffan (GER) |
| Matteo Rizzo (ITA) | Rino Matsuike (JPN) | Maria Pavlova / Alexei Sviatchenko (HUN) | Lilah Fear / Lewis Gibson (GBR) |
| Kao Miura (JPN) | Kaori Sakamoto (JPN) | Lucrezia Beccari / Matteo Guarise (ITA) | Allison Reed / Saulius Ambrulevičius (LTU) |
| Kazuki Tomono (JPN) | Rinka Watanabe (JPN) | Daria Danilova / Michel Tsiba (NED) | Oona Brown / Gage Brown (USA) |
| Sota Yamamoto (JPN) | Chaeyeon Kim (KOR) | Eva Pate / Logan Bye (USA) | |
| Mikhail Shaidorov (KAZ) | Starr Andrews (USA) | Emilea Zingas / Vadym Kolesnik (USA) | |
| Junhwan Cha (KOR) | Audrey Shin (USA) | ||
| Liam Kapeikis (USA) | Lindsay Thorngren (USA) |
Pre-Skate Canada Interview Quotes
(complied by Gina Capellazzi)
Two-time World bronze medalists Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier will kick off their 13th season together this weekend at Skate Canada. In a pre-Skate Canada call Oct. 18, Gilles talked about the reason they decided to keep competing.
“We had one of the most successful seasons of our life last year,” she said. “It’s so easy to feel complete in your skating career with a season like that, but I feel like we didn’t have that completion at Worlds. I think we wanted a little bit more and obviously with circumstances kind of out of our control, it left us feeling like we didn’t fully accomplish what we set out to do.”
Gilles and Poirier chose not to compete in any Challenger Series events this season, a decision they made for the second season in a row.
“There was no way that we would have been ready for any Challenger Series this year,” Gilles said. “We didn’t do one last year and we felt like it was almost for the better.”
“It’s a risk to not put programs out earlier, but it really has given us time to develop the storyline, develop those programs without having any kind of interference,” she added.
This season, Gilles and Poirier are skating to “No More I Love You’s” by the Lover Speaks, David Freeman and Joseph Hughes, and “Addicted to Love” by Robert Palmer for their rhythm dance. For the free dance, they will be skating to the main theme and end titles, and “Switching Sides” from the Wuthering Heights soundtrack by Ryuichi Sakamoto.
Gilles and Poirier are both 31-years-old so the question that is often asked to the two is how much longer they plan to keep competing. Gilles said they are taking it year-by-year.
“I think it’s actually been kind of nice to look at it that way. We’ve spent most of our career looking at what we want to achieve and I think (taking it year-by-year) really just give us the opportunity to focus on the now and not get too ahead of ourselves,” she explained.
Event Schedule
Friday, October 27, 2023
Women’s Short Program: 2 p.m. (PT), 5 p.m. (ET)
Rhythm Dance: 3:50 p.m. (PT), 6:50 p.m. (ET)
Pairs’ Short Program: 6:45 p.m. (PT), 9:45 p.m. (ET)
Men’s Short Program: 8:10 p.m. (PT), 11:10 p.m. (ET)
Saturday, October 28, 2023
Women’s Free Skate: 1:15 p.m. (PT), 4:15 p.m. (ET)
Free Dance: 3:25 p.m. (PT), 6:25 p.m. (ET)
Pairs’ Free Skate: 6:00 p.m. (PT), 9:00 p.m. (ET)
Men’s Free Skate: 7:37 p.m. (PT), 10:37 p.m. (ET)
TV Schedule
Skate Canada Highlights – 12 p.m. (ET) NBC – Nov 4.
(note the date – delayed broadcast!)
Streaming Schedule
Friday, October 27, 2023
Women’s Short – 5 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. (ET)
Rhythm Dance – 6:50 p.m. – 8:09 p.m. (ET)
Pairs’ Short – 9:45 p.m. – 10:50 p.m. (ET)
Men’s Short – 11:10 p.m.-12:40 a.m. (ET)
Saturday, October 28, 2023
Women’s Free – 4:15 p.m. – 6:03 p.m. (ET)
Free Dance: 6:25 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. (ET)
Pairs’ Free Skate: 9:00 p.m. – 10:17 p.m. (ET)
Men’s Free Skate: 10:37 p.m. – 1 a.m. (ET)
Sunday, October 29, 2023
Gala – 5 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Previous Winners
| Past Winners | Men | Women | Pairs | Dance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 (Mississauga, ON) | Shoma Uno (JPN) | Rinka Watanabe (JPN) | Riku Miura / Ryuichi Kihara (JPN) | Piper Gilles / Paul Poirier (CAN) |
| 2021 (Vancouver, BC) | Nathan Chen (USA) | Kamila Valieva (RUS) | Weijing Sui / Cong Han (CHN) | Piper Gilles / Paul Poirier (CAN) |
| 2020 (CANCELLED) | ||||
| 2019 (Kelowna, BC) | Yuzuru Hanyu (JPN) | Alexandra Trusova (RUS) | Aleksandra Boikova / Dmitrii Kozlovskii (RUS) | Piper Gilles / Paul Poirier (CAN) |
| 2018 (Laval, QB) | Shoma Uno (JPN) | Elizaveta Tuktamysheva (RUS) | Vanessa James / Morgan Ciprès (FRA) | Madison Hubbell / Zachary Donohue (USA) |
| 2017 (Regina, SK) | Shoma Uno (JPN) | Kaetlyn Osmond (CAN) | Meagan Duhamel / Eric Radford (CAN) | Tessa Virtue / Scott Moir (CAN) |
