From shingles to smiles: Why Olympic figure skaters learn to mask their pain

MILAN – At 36, Evan Bates has been skating for over two decades, beginning his Olympic career with a splashy debut at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

That is around the time he began experiencing chronic pain.

“I’ve been dealing with back and neck issues for years,” the American ice dancing medal favourite said on Wednesday. “It’s mileage on the body.”

Past performances of Bates skating with his longtime partner, Madison Chock, share no hint of the athlete’s medical woes. Instead, he presents the picture of someone embracing the spotlight: With bright eyes and a winning smile, he has lifted, jumped, twisted and thrown his body across the ice rink.

“So many athletes,” he said, “go out on centre ice and put on a strength that maybe fans don’t see.”

Balancing the brutal with the delicate is a duality with which most figure skaters are familiar. Unlike hockey players, who are often lauded for playing with injuries, skaters are trained to hide their pain on the ice, keeping every wince and groan locked behind fresh makeup, coiled hair and a flashy smile.

Deanna Stellato-Dudek was set to represent Canada in ice dancing with her partner, Maxime Deschamps, until an injury sustained during a practice in Quebec prevented her from flying out to Milan in time for the team event on Friday.

Skate Canada and the Canadian Olympic Committee have not disclosed the nature or severity of Stellato-Dudek’s injury, only that her condition is being assessed on a daily basis. The pair have not yet pulled out of the individual pairs event to be held next week.

Stephen Gogolev, who will represent Canada in men’s singles, said on Wednesday that he’s feeling the “best” he has in a long time, but recalled a time when he had to compete with a serious injury.

“Stress fracture in my lumbar spine,” Gogolev said. Common causes of the condition are repetitive high-impact movements like bending backwards or twisting, that put load on the lower back.

That’s how Gogolev skated out onto the ice at a national competition in 2024.

“It was a little concerning to be skating with that much pain,” he said. “It wasn’t so much about skating but about getting to the end of the program.”

It meant having to withdraw from the rest of the season to focus on physical recovery. He added that he wished the public could better understand “how much work goes into training and preparing for these competitions.”

“The mental stress, pressure, physical stress you go through to get to competitions like these,” he said.

“There’s no injury bonus,” said Jackie Wong, a longtime figure skating analyst and blogger based in New York . Skaters performing with injuries are more likely to deliver a suboptimal or “conservative” performances to avoid worsening the injury.

“If you’re injured as a hockey player and you score a goal, you’re scoring a goal,” he said. “If you’re injured as a figure skater and you go up and do a jump and you don’t land it because you’re injured, then you’re not going to get the points for it.”

“You often see injuries lessen the execution of the program and be reflected in the scores.”

Instead, on several occasions, it has led to skaters having to withdraw from a competition — or a season — after attempting to compete while injured.

Evgenia Medvedeva, a two-time Olympic silver medallist, fell during the Rostelecom Cup in 2017 on a double-axel, considered a relatively simple jump for advanced competitive skaters. She had suffered a fracture on a fall before then and kept trying to skate because the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics were coming up.

On Wednesday, Trennt Michaud, who will be representing Canada in the pairs events with partner Lia Pereira, recalled how he came down with shingles a week before competing in Finland.

Common symptoms of the viral infection are an often painful; an itching rash that can spread over the face and body on one side. The pain can feel like intense burning, stabbing or throbbing.

Immediate treatment and medication helped to manage the pain, but it meant that Michaud had to compete on lower-than-usual energy levels. But it helped that the two had already begun the competitive season and were familiar with their routine.

“There was a lot of training leading up to that, that we could rely on,” Michaud said. “But I hope nobody ever gets it, because your energy is gone.”

Assuming Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps are set to compete next week, Wong expects that they would throw themselves into the performance, just as any other competitive skating pair.

“Once the music comes on,” he said, “they switch off everything else, and they switch on what they are used to, which is just, you’re going out there and doing what you’re supposed to do.”