42-Year-Old Skater Defies Age at the 2026 Winter Olympics

Deanna Stellato-Dudek, 42, Redefines Olympic Limits in Figure Skating Debut

MONTREAL — In many ways, the story of Deanna Stellato-Dudek’s quest for a gold medal in Olympic figure skating is just like any other. The Park Ridge, Illinois native started skating at age 5 and dreamed of going to the Olympic Games. She traded a normal adolescence for early mornings at the rink, college preparation for national competition preparation. A hip injury seemed to end her career when she was 17. She fought her way back and competed at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics on Sunday, February 15th.

So far, so familiar — except for one thing. Stellato-Dudek is 42.

The Olympics she had originally aimed for were the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City, Utah. She took not six months but 16 years off, and in those 16 years she did not coach or do other skating-adjacent work. She became the director of aesthetics for a plastic surgeon.

When she returned to the sport, she did so as a pairs skater, and when she and her partner, Maxime Deschamps, won the world championship in 2024, she made history as the oldest woman to win a world title in any figure skating discipline. (They also won the Canadian national championship in 2023, 2024 and 2025 and were silver medalists this year.)

At the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, Stellato-Dudek once again became the oldest woman to compete in figure skating. Like Tom Brady and LeBron James, she is redefining the limits of what is possible in her sport.

Skating has long been seen as the province of the young, nimble and light. Tara Lipinski won her Olympic gold medal for singles skating at 15 in 1998; so did Alina Zagitova in 2018. It took a doping scandal surrounding 15-year-old Russian skater Kamila Valieva during the 2022 Beijing Olympics to get the International Skating Union to raise the minimum age for competition — to 17.

Amber Glenn, an American singles skater who is among the favorites for a gold medal, has called herself the “fun aunt” because at 26 she is much older than many of her peers. Though pairs skaters tend to be older, only four of the female pairs gold medalists since 1956 have even been in their 30s (and all of those were younger than 35).

Stellato-Dudek acknowledged that social media commentators sometimes refer to her as “Grandma Deanna.”

“I mean, I am a whole legal human being older than almost everybody else,” she said, laughing.

Her coach, Josée Picard, who came out of retirement to work with Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps, said that when Stellato-Dudek announced her return to skating, people thought it was “crazy.” Her mother, Ann Stellato, agreed, saying, “Nobody expected her to persevere and to do what she has done. Nobody.”

Defying Society’s Expectations

“The age pendulum for me swings both ways,” Stellato-Dudek said, speaking after a four-hour practice session with Deschamps at the skating complex outside Montreal. She was dressed in four layers of tops, a puffer jacket, a neck warmer and a head warmer. Her dark hair was pulled into a topknot.

She is 5 feet tall but has the muscled body of an athlete. “When I do well, I am celebrated more than my younger counterparts,” she said. “After worlds, I had, like, 20,000 messages on Instagram. But when we do poorly, Notice so many trolls DMing me about my body, my face, my hair, that I’m not strong enough.”

She said people seem offended that she would continue to compete, or they think she’s trying to be famous. “If I was trying to be famous, I would have gone on a reality show,” she said. “‘Survivor’ would have been a better option for me than trying to get an Olympic medal.”

Stellato-Dudek decided to return to skating when she was in her early 30s. She didn’t want to look back and regret not trying to reach a podium because she had listened to “society telling you that’s the age you should stop.” She didn’t want to be a sideshow, famous only for being the oldest competitor on the ice. She wanted to be a serious contender who also happened to be older.

For six months, she got up at 4 a.m. To train and then went to her day job. When she could do triple jumps again, she contacted her old coach, quit the plastic surgeon’s office and decided to try pairs skating. As a singles skater, she had often been asked if she would consider pairs; she is the ideal size for the lifts required.

Stellato-Dudek’s first partner was based in Florida, so she moved there. When he needed surgery, she called every coach she knew until one recommended Deschamps, who was in Canada. At 34, he is also on the older end for a male figure skater, but It’s within the normal range.

Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps knew they were on a clock if they were aiming for 2026, so they had to choose nationalities. It was unlikely that Deschamps would get U.S. Citizenship on their schedule, so Stellato-Dudek applied to become Canadian and was approved in late 2024.

She moved to Montreal in mid-2019. She knew no one except her partner and coach and spoke no French. Because COVID-19 lockdowns began not long after, she didn’t really make friends until she had been living there for three years. She married during her time away from the ice, but has said that she “sacrificed a relationship” for her sport. She does not have children.

She currently lives with Goldy, the half-Maltese, half-poodle that Deschamps and Picard gave her for her 40th birthday. Goldy has her own hat and coat and goes with Stellato-Dudek to the rink. The dog is particularly good at standing on her hind legs and, like her owner, can do a twirl.

Defying Age

Before the Olympics, Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps trained five days a week on the ice, spent Sunday at the gym and had Saturday off. Stellato-Dudek’s entire life was built around skating and preserving her physical resilience, from waking up at 6 a.m. To warm up for an hour to a three-hour recovery process at night involving rolling out her muscles, cupping, wearing compression pants and using red-light therapy. Sometimes she also did a cold plunge, which she admitted to hating.

The extra warmup and cool-down time are concessions to her age. “I have to do a lot more recovery to start at the same point as my younger counterparts the next day,” she said. “When I was a kid, I did no postskating recovery. Literally zero.”

She eats 70 grams of protein a day to maintain her muscle mass and drinks half her weight in ounces of water. She avoids gluten, fried foods, dairy and sugar, though she does allow herself a “cheat day” once a month, when she might have some chocolate.

She also takes a lot of supplements — vitamin D, vitamin C, protein peptides — all of which are checked for banned substances.

In 2025, she became the first woman to perform a backflip in her program since Surya Bonaly in 1998, when it was illegal in competitive ice skating. (It was accepted by the International Skating Union only for the 2024-25 season.)

She will be wearing skating dresses by Oscar de la Renta, also her idea. The Oscar de la Renta label had never collaborated with an athlete, but Laura Kim, a creative director, said, “We’re the same age, and when I heard her story, I thought, I can relate.”

The result is a champagne-colored short program dress with art deco beading inspired by a dress from the label’s spring 2026 collection, and an asymmetric red number with more than 200,000 hand-sewn glass beads for the long program, to match its flamenco soundtrack. Stellato-Dudek hopes her more-haute-than-usual outfits will start a skating trend of partnering with fashion designers.

Despite a head injury the week before the Olympics, Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps were cleared to compete in the individual program after being forced to withdraw from the team competition on February 10th.

“I want to leave my mark on this sport,” Stellato-Dudek said, “and I have to be wearing a medal around my neck to really get that happy ending.”

Deschamps and Picard said they were considering retiring after the Olympics. Stellato-Dudek acknowledged that there are perks to the idea — “I haven’t had a margarita in 10 years,” she said — but she is not sure. “That is my decision and my decision alone,” she said. “If I want to continue to the 2030 Olympics when I’m 46, that’s what I’m going to do. And nobody can tell me I can’t.”