Learning Curves
When Madeline Schizas looks back on her busiest competitive season to date, she acknowledges it was a campaign that forced her to adopt a more mature approach.
One competition rolled into the next in a season of many firsts for the 19-year-old Canadian — the highlight being her first appearance at the Olympic Winter Games. It was a thrilling ride that rarely slowed and forced Schizas to learn how to adapt on the fly.
Madeline Schizas entered the Olympic season with little in the way of international experience beyond the 2021 World Championships in Sweden, where she placed 13th — and that came at the end of a COVID-19 interrupted season in which Canada’s top senior skaters did not have any live competitions, except for the small, elite group that got that one opportunity in Stockholm.
However, that changed in a big way in 2021-2022, a season that included her first Challenger Series event (Finlandia Trophy), her first two senior Grand Prix competitions (Skate Canada International and Rostelecom Cup), the Olympic Winter Games and the 2022 World Championships.
Schizas might have felt a little out of breath by the end of it all, but she emerged from that experience as a more mature athlete and person. In the midst of
