Team Canada’s Pereira & Michaud sit third after pairs’ short program

Team Canada’s Lia Pereira and Trennt Michaud sit third after the short program portion of the pairs figure skating competition at Milano Cortina 2026.

Skating to “Say You Love Me” by Jessie Ware, the pair posted a personal best score of 74.60, which put them in first place at the time—a position they stayed in entering the day’s final flight. The duo were the first Canadian pair to skate, going ninth in the 19-team field.

“We’re very proud. We’ve put in so much work and we feel like we’ve been here for a long time too,” said Pereira. “So after being pretty content with the short program in the team event, we still came out wanting more and we’re very motivated people. We always want to put out our best and today we did that. So it’s a really nice, kind of full circle moment to do that at the Olympics.”

While this is the first Olympic Games for the pair, this wasn’t their first Olympic performance. The two competed in the team event a week ago, something they felt helped them be more comfortable performing on Sunday.

“I definitely think it’s huge to have been able to do the team event because it feels like we’ve already fully competed, which we have, and it wasn’t very long ago,” said Michaud. “It feels like it’s been a long time [that] we’ve been here now, but you know, realistically it’s been about a week, so we did a really good job this week of planning with our coaches of our down days and what we were managing throughout the week, and we’re just really excited to get out there to perform that today and to get out and get going for the [free skate] again tomorrow.”

The pairs event consists of two parts: the short program and the free skate. The top 16 teams in Sunday’s short program advanced to Monday’s free skate. The combined scores will determine who wins medals at Milano Cortina 2026.

Along with Pereira and Michaud, Canada’s Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps will take part in Monday’s free skate. The two made their highly anticipated Olympic debut in the short program, but a surprising and flukey fall by Stellato-Dudek on the dismount of their lift proved costly as the pair finished 14th with a score of 66.04 points. They likely lost 5-6 points from the grade of execution on the lift.

“We were proud of ourselves. We did great. We were really enjoying being out there, and that’s what’s most important,” Deschamps said. “I was proud of Deanna. We did great until that mistake that was extremely costly, but overall we’re just proud of being able to skate and represent our country.”

“We were happy with that performance until that fall,” added Stellato-Dudek.

READ: Stellato-Dudek & Deschamps take first skate on Olympic ice after pre-Games injury

The 2024 World pairs champions completed their first practice at Milano Cortina 2026 on Friday after a delayed arrival. Stellato-Dudek suffered an injury while training just prior to the Games, which put their first Olympic appearance very much in question.

Many have been invested in the pair’s story since they began skating together in 2019. Just three years earlier, Stellato-Dudek came out of a 16-year retirement from figure skating. Now 42, Stellato-Dudek became the oldest woman to compete in an Olympic figure skating event since St. Moritz 1928. Deschamps, 34, had competed with eight other partners before teaming up with Stellato-Dudek.

No matter how these Olympic Games end for Stellato-Dudek, she hope she’s made an impact.

“To me this has been a long time coming. There’s been a lot of people in their mid to upper 30s, even early 40s that have been trying to continue for a long period of time. I’m just lucky enough that I found the right partner to be able to get me to these Olympic Games, but I always hope that in the future somebody breaks my record and somebody wins worlds above 40 and somebody is qualified and skates at the Olympics above 42. That’s something that I would love to see. When you’ve lived a life, you really have something to offer to the audience.”

Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps weren’t the only pairs to have a rough day on the ice as a number of teams suffered errors. Germany’s Minerva Fabienne Hase and Nikita Volodin currently sit first with a score of 80.01 while Anastasiia Metelkina and Luka Berulava of Georgia sit second with a score of 75.06.

While Pereira and Michaud will try and catch those ahead of them in the free skate, it’s not lost on them who sits behind them. Two-time and reigning world champions Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara of Japan are fifth after coming down early from their lift. China’s Sui Wenjing and Han Cong, who won gold in the event at Beijing 2022 and silver at PyeongChang 2018, currently sit sixth, showing just how impressive this field is.

“It means a lot to us,” said Michaud about scoring higher than the Chinese duo. “We’ve taken a lot of things from them. They’re one of the teams that really captivated you. They’re effortless in their performance throughout their entire program, and that’s what makes Sui Han really special, and we’ve tried to captivate that in our own way of being Trennt and Lia with that. It’s another confidence boost for ourselves.”

The free skate portion of the pairs competition will take place Monday beginning at 2 p.m. ET.