The Stunning Transformation Of Figure Skater Deanna Stellato-Dudek

Some figure skaters compete in the Olympics to prove their abilities, but ahead of the 2026 Winter Games, Deanna Stellato-Dudek declared that she had something more to prove. Born in 1983, the athlete is much older than the other skaters who qualified for the 2026 Olympics in Milano Cortina. Nonetheless, Stellato-Dudek wanted to show the world that one can set new goals at any age. "Someone close to me once said to me: 'I think that what you're doing is bigger than you.' And I've always kept that close to my chest," she told NBC Olympics in 2025. "It kind of takes some stress away from me that what I'm doing is more just symbolic for people of an abnormal age, doing something new in life."

That's not to say that Stellato-Dudek has had an easy road. Tragic things tend to happen to Olympic athletes, and when Stellato-Dudek was just a teenager, a sudden injury forced her into early retirement. She took a 16-year hiatus from skating before deciding to train for the Olympics. While she did not try out for the 2022 Olympic figure skating team, she did set her sights on the 2026 games and beyond. Her resilience paved the way for her to join the ranks of athletes like Princess Anne, who made Olympic history. But, to achieve these goals, she has had to transform from an ambitious junior skater to a normal worker with a normal life to an Olympic dreamer.

Some people spend their whole lives searching for their passion, but Deanna Stellato-Dudek discovered her love of figure skating at an early age. When she was just 5 years old, the future Olympian signed up for classes at a Glenview, Illinois, ice rink. Stellato-Dudek took to the sport immediately — which was something of a happy accident. After all, she hadn't harbored any particular interest in skating before enrolling in classes. Her mother had actually just signed her up out of convenience.

Laughing about this fortuitous coincidence in the Olympic Channel documentary "Deanna's Dream," Stellato-Dudek recalled, "Our house is so close to a skating rink, you could throw a stone and hit the skating rink. So, my mom started my brother in hockey simply because it was the closest activity to the house." The arrangement was so convenient that Stellato-Dudek's mom started thinking about enrolling her daughter in figure skating classes. Before long, both of the children were spending a lot of time at the rink. Stellato-Dudek joked that her mom was trying to hit "two birds with one stone."

The loving mother didn't realize that she was about to get a bit more than she bargained for. Stellato-Dudek took to skating immediately and quickly began to outperform her peers. By the time she was just 7, the young skater was traveling from Glenview to Dallas, Texas, for competitions — and she was winning.

Throughout the 1990s, Deanna Stellato-Dudek evolved as a figure skater. She trained hard to learn new skills, and before long, she was one of the top junior skaters in the United States. As her childhood coach, Cindy Watson-Caprel, would put it in "Deanna's Dream," "Deanna figured out quite early on that if she worked harder than anybody else in the rink, that when she went to competition, it was going to pay off."

In 1999, the brilliant young skater won a gold medal at the Junior Grand Prix Final in the singles category. Always one to keep her eyes on the prize, Stellato-Dudek started training for Junior Worlds. At the huge international competition, she shone so brightly that she earned a silver medal. It appeared that her dream of becoming a senior skater by 2002 was a sure shot. Her ultimate goal of competing in the 2006 Olympic Games in Turin, Italy, didn't seem particularly far-fetched, either.

At the 2000 Kerri Lotion Figure Skating Classic, Stellato-Dudek gave such a spectacular performance that she received a perfect 6.0 score in the artistic category. In a whirl of emotion rivaling even the most tear-filled Olympic moments, the skater rushed tell her choreographer, Phillip Mills, the good news. "You're never going to believe what happened," she gushed into the telephone. "I got a 6.0 for artistic! A 6.0!"

If Deanna Stellato-Dudek appeared to be at the top of the world on the eve of 2001, it was nothing more than an illusion. The year would be defined by a series of great disappointments for the young skater — no thanks to an injury that would put her career on hold. Recalling the moment that would change Stellato-Dudek's life forever, her then-coach, Cindy Watson-Caprel, told the "Deanna's Dream" documentary makers, "We were warming up for the long program in the morning, and she went to take off into a double axel, and got up in the air. I said, 'What happened?' And she said, 'You know, when I went up in the jump, something popped.' And it was her hip flexor."

At the time, it was clear that this injury would limit Stellato-Dudek's skating career; however, the extent of the damage was not obvious. Hoping to salvage her budding career, the young athlete insisted upon continuing her training into 2001. As she pushed through the pain, Stellato-Dudek's hip injury did not improve. In fact, it began compounding with other injuries — each of which held her back a little more. When she finally fractured her ankle at the age of 17, Stellato-Dudek was forced to admit defeat. She publicly announced that her skating career was over, and she began to look ahead to a future away from her beloved ice rink.

In the first few years following the end of her ice skating career, Deanna Stellato-Dudek could not help but flounder a bit. She had dedicated her entire life to her Olympic dreams, and discovering other interests was not easy for her. The figure skater set off for college, where she tried out a bunch of different majors — none of which really captured her heart. And, while many other students reveled in the freedom that college life provided, Stellato-Dudek found the lack of structure to be frustrating. "You don't realize all the things that skating gives you until all of a sudden you don't have them. It gives you routine, it gives you discipline," she lamented in an interview with NBC Olympics.

While searching for new interests, someone close to Stellato-Dudek commented on her lifelong love of spa treatments. Laughing about this in the same interview, Stellato-Dudek joked, "I have no idea why I wanted a facial when I was, like, 12!" Nonetheless, this passion for aesthetics inspired the then-retired skater to earn a certification in medical esthetics. She went on to learn how to do both injectables and laser treatments. Before long, she was working for a big-time medical practice as the lead aesthetician. "I felt like I really found my niche," she told NBC Olympics. "By the time I left, there were five practitioners underneath me — six of us total." Her future seemed to be made, and she found further happiness when she married her husband, Michael Dudek, in 2013.

Even though Deanna Stellato-Dudek found happiness outside of her Olympic dreams, she always felt that there was something missing. Beyond the structure provided by figure skating, she missed the creative aspect of the sport. "Skating gives you this artistic freedom that you can't capture any other place," she revealed in a conversation with NBC Olympics. Although she didn't linger on these feelings every day, they were prominent enough to come bubbling up at an unexpected time.

"We were at a work retreat, and we were just doing a fun little exercise over lunch, where we all picked up a notecard and read the question out loud. And then everybody around the table would answer it," Stellato-Dudek recalled to Skating ISU in 2024. "And the notecard I happened to pick was, 'What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?'" Her answer came whizzing out of her mouth: "Oh, I would win an Olympic gold medal." 

Nobody at the retreat seemed as shocked by Stellato-Dudek's response as she did. While everybody else at the table moved on and politely answered the question, she sat there wondering if she still could kindle that same fire that had defined her childhood. Just weeks later, she found herself waking up at 4 a.m. to skate before work. Although about 16 years had passed since she had essentially retired from the sport, Stellato-Dudek realized she was craving a comeback.

As Deanna Stellato-Dudek continued training, she couldn't help but wonder if a return to competitive skating was even feasible. Determined to find out if her lifelong Olympic dreams were still possible, she traveled to Florida to meet up with her old coach, Cindy Watson-Caprel. The meeting proved to be extremely fortuitous. In an interview with NBC Olympics, Stellato-Dudek relayed Watson-Caprel's positive message. "She said to me, I looked like I'd been off the ice for six months, not 10 years," she revealed.

Interestingly, Watson-Caprel was not the only expert with whom Stellato-Dudek consulted on that Florida trip. Mitch Moyer, Senior Director for Athlete High Performance at U.S. Figure Skating, ran into Stellato-Dudek at the rink and gave her his honest advice. Rather than return to her former discipline — which was the singles competition — he suggested that she try pair skating. Stellato-Dudek accepted this challenge with enthusiasm. "It was very serendipitous that he was there," she told Olympics.com before adding, "This second time around, I had decided not to pass on any suggestion, any opportunity. I decided I wanted to take any opportunity. And that's exactly what I did."

She paired with Nathan Bartholomay and began learning about skating with a partner. The duo did quite well, earning bronze in both the 2018 and 2019 U.S. National Championships; however, the partnership was not to be. After Bartholomay sustained an injury, they parted ways, and Stellato-Dudek began to skate with Canadian skater Maxime Deschamps.

Deanna Stellato-Dudek saw much of her drive reflected in Maxime Deschamps. The ice skating duo craved gold medals, and they were willing to do anything to obtain them. Speaking to Skating ISU, Deschamps said that he wanted to work with Stellato-Dudek because of her insatiable desire to achieve. "The reason Deanna is so special is actually her fire, her dedication. And, for her, it's Olympic every day," he revealed.

In 2024, Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps saw their hard work pay off when they competed at the World Championships. "The moment we finished, I asked Max, 'How did it go?' because after each element, I just forgot about it and moved on to what I needed to do next," Stellato-Dudek later told Hello! in a spread that was shared on journalist Tracey Williams' Instagram. Deschamps replied that they'd skated beautifully. "When our score came up, I was really happy that it was our highest of the season," she gushed. 

The score didn't just mark Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps' personal best — it was also enough for the duo to cinch the coveted gold medal. For Stellato-Dudek, this was not just a dream come true. Because she was 40 years old, the score also made Stellato-Dudek the oldest woman to ever become a figure skating world champion. "I do not go a day, I think, not hearing about my age, but I carry it with pride," she told NBC Olympics. 

Following their huge win at the 2024 World Championships, Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps began to look forward to the 2026 Olympics. However, there was one major obstacle preventing them from realizing the next phase of their dreams — they hailed from different countries. Because Stellato-Dudek was American and Deschamps was Canadian, they would not necessarily get to skate together. By then, Stellato-Dudek was already living in Montreal, Canada, and fully immersed in the Great White North. She decided to do the only thing that made sense — become a Canadian citizen. 

Of course, the process of earning her Canadian citizenship was not easy. Stellato-Dudek had to study for a test that included questions about Canada's history, traditions, government, and geography. On December 11, 2024, she proudly announced her new nationality on Instagram. "With so much gratitude and pride, I am happy to announce I have officially become a Canadian citizen today. I am so incredibly happy and relieved that Maxime and I are free to realize our Olympic dreams," she wrote.

In addition to information about Canadian culture, Stellato-Dudek studied one of her new homeland's official languages, French. "I'm not fluent by any stretch of the imagination, but I've tried," she shared in an interview with Hello! "I downloaded Duolingo and started learning French, and I now have a streak of 1,762 days." This dedication allowed the skater to thrive in Canada.

In October 2025, Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps made skating history by incorporating a dangerous move into their routine. While competing at the ISU Grand Prix de France, the duo became the very first pair skaters to successfully perform a backflip in an international competition. The move had been banned from ice rinks for decades. However, the International Skating Union (ISU) changed the rules for the 2024/2025 season, allowing figure skaters to perform the skill for the first time since 1976.

For Stellato-Dudek, performing a backflip was personal. "Last year the ISU just allowed backflips and Adam Siao Him Fa has done it and Ilia Malinin is on it but none of the women have done it. I wanted to show that the girls play the backflip game just as good as the boys. It is important to me," she told the ISU in an interview. When the organization finally gave skaters the green light to perform the move, Stellato-Dudek asked Deschamps if she could do a backflip from his chest. His initial response was negative.

"I said, 'Just give me one day. If I can't do it on the first day, I'll let it go.' So he said, 'okay', and I was, of course, able to do it on the first day," Stellato-Dudek told the ISU in the same interview. The move helped the pair get one step closer to finding out what really happens at the Olympic Village.

As Deanna Stellato-Dudek prepared for the 2026 Olympics in Milano Cortina, she knew that her age made her stand out. Not only was she older than many of her competitors, but she had also gained a lot more life experience than everyone else on the rink. "Being in your forties, it's an advantage. I have lived a lot of life. I have loved, I have lost. And I'm able to portray those life experiences on the ice," the skater explained in "Deanna's Dream."

Despite this positive outlook, Stellato-Dudek had to come to terms with her body and its limitations. "You have a different mindset when you're younger, because you can get away with so much — the world gives you an inch and you take a mile," she told NBC Olympics. By 2025, that was no longer true for Stellato-Dudek, who found herself experiencing the aches and pains of age. "It's important to understand that I am almost never not in pain," she said in "Deanna's Dream." "I am in pain every day. I am still sore on Monday from Friday."

It would be easy for Stellato-Dudek to give up on her dream, but she has persevered. "I want to be 80 years old, sitting drinking a glass of wine and, whether I succeeded or didn't succeed, knowing I gave it everything I had," she declared to NBC Olympics.