Canadian figure skating coaching couple boasts astonishing 11 Olympic ice dance teams

Opinion

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This article was published 12/02/2022 (1047 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BEIJING It’s a good thing the endlessly chic Marie-France Dubreuil knows how to pull off the little black suit.

Chanel, looks like, though it may be off-label. In days of yore, the ice dancer — twice a world silver medallist with husband Patrice Lauzon, five times a Canadian champion — would have run up her own costume on a sewing machine. There wasn’t money for professional seamstresses, much less haute couture.

But the success the high-powered figure skating couple has enjoyed as coaches is nothing short of dazzling and surely immensely lucrative.

They boast an astonishing 11 teams — out of 23 — in the Olympic ice dance competition. No one has ever seen such a thing.

From the Pyeongchang runner-up French, with a humongous chance for gold here, to all three American tandems, to the Chinese, British, Spaniards, Japanese Armenians and the No. 2 Canadians, all hail from their Ice Academy in Montreal, the Oxford or Sorbonne of this skating discipline.

Because coaches at the sideboards usually wear nationally branded Games jackets and coats to complement their skaters, Dubreuil has a stack of outerwear that she has rotated through practice sessions and through last week’s team event, where her American ice dancers won silver, and her Japanese bronze.

But for the rhythm dance competition Saturday, and for the free dance segment Monday, Dubreuil has gone strictly fade-to-black.

“We’re neutral,” she says. “We’re here to support the athletes. We want them to be pushed in front. And not us be a distraction by changing jackets.”

Lauzon, her adoring husband — that’s what we remember most about this couple, how unabashedly romantic their routines were back in the aughts, epitomized by their wedding-night-themed “At Last” routine, the final program they skated — looks sartorially debonair all the time, a fancier of turtleneck sweaters before they came back in fashion.

Somehow together they’ve discovered the knack of turning out or honing or elevating to greatness the best ice dance duos in the world. That included Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir four years ago, before they retired with a second Olympic gold. Where once Russians were the ne plus ultra of coaching, nearly everybody in the elite dance game now finds their way to the Ice Academy.

In Sochi, Dubreuil-Lauzon, still rather new to the coaching biz, had one team in the mix. In Pyeongchang it was four. In Beijing, 11.

“It went quite fast,” Lauzon says of their up-up-up coaching trajectory.

It can get quite chaotic here as the couple often takes turns rushing to grab a seat in the kiss ’n’ cry and await scores with one team while prepping another perform. They’ve had four teams in a couple of flight groups in Beijing. Nobody has complained of not getting enough individual tending, though it should be noted that there are five coaches from their academy here, including French dance savant and choreographer Romain Haguenauer.

“It’s similar to what we have at home,” Dubreuil says, pointing out there are usually five dance duos on the practice ice at the same time. “We try to keep it as natural and as flow-y as possible so everybody gets attention. But, for them, the situation is very familiar. We have five coaches, so we’re able to manage a (rotation) that makes sense for everyone and that serves all of them the best we can. That’s our job.”

There are massive egos in this sport, as there probably has to be in any sport at the crème de la crème level. It’s quite amazing that the skaters, so many in the same stable, appear to get along well. At least nobody’s whacking a rival in the kneecap.

“They compete for a medal, they don’t compete against each other,” Dubreuil says, expressing her academy’s core philosophy. “We don’t train them to compete against each other, we train them to compete to be on the podium.”

Adds Lauzon: “One of the main things we focus on is having an environment that is holistic, safe; everybody has fun and we take care of the human being more than anything else. I think that’s what draws people in. When they come to the centre, they feel it’s fun to train together and they push each other to another level.”

The encomiums for the coaches and their distinctly different academy are clearly heartfelt.

“It is like a community,” praises Guillaume Cizeron, who, with partner Gabriella Papadakis, is hoping Beijing will finally deliver the French an Olympic gold, after four world titles.

“We’re all really good friends. With five coaches here, everyone’s getting as much time and attention as they need. It’s a lot of support. It’s also a wonderful experience to be at the Olympics with some of your best friends and teammates that you’ve been training with for many, many years now.”

They set a new world record for the rhythm dance on Saturday, 90.83, breaking their own previous high water mark from 2019.

Olivia Smart, half of the Spanish team that was fourth at the European championships, says: “The coaches have done an extremely good job of keeping us all positive. It’s uplifting for each other. There’s never been any bad blood between any of us. That’s unique. I’ve never been at a skating school that has the energy we do.”

Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Nikolaj Soerensen — she’s from Montreal, he’s from Copenhagen and they represented Denmark before competing for Canada — were among the first three dance teams that Dubreuil and Lauzon took on. They’re still there.

“It’s funny because I was in the room, putting my skates on just before we went on the ice,” Fournier Beaudry said after their uptempo rhythm dance. “We were in the same warm-up with a few of the teams from school. I was so grateful to be there with many of our friends. We go through the same things, the same ups and downs, same stress. So we’re all in the room stressing out and breathing together.”

Soerensen tries to identify what makes Dubreuil and Lauzon so effective and impactful as coaches.

“It’s something nontangible, hard to put a finger on. The energy that Marie and Patrice have set from the beginning in the arena. It’s a vibration, where people just know that there’s no bad blood, no bad competition on the ice.

“There’s just no room for bulls—.”

Rosie DiManno is a Toronto-based columnist covering sports and current affairs for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @rdimanno