This is an excerpt from The Buzzer, which is CBC Sports' daily email newsletter. Stay up to speed on what's happening in sports by subscribing here.
The most important figure skating event in the run-up to the Olympics begins Thursday with the Grand Prix Final in Nagoya, Japan. This is the last time that all of the world's best skaters will gather before the Winter Games in northern Italy.
Here's what to know:
It's the best of the best.
The Grand Prix of Figure Skating's regular season consists of six events held around the world in October and November. Skaters can compete in up to two of these. They earn points based on where they finish, and those points decide who gets to compete in the Final. Only the top six in each discipline — men's, women's, pairs and ice dance — are invited.
Because skaters (and/or their handlers) can pick and choose which two regular Grand Prix events they enter, we don't always get the greatest matchups throughout the season. But with the best of the best all competing in Japan this week, the Final should give us a pretty good idea of who the top medal contenders will be at the Olympics this February.
Canada earned two entries.
For the sixth straight time, no Canadian singles skaters qualified for the Final. It wasn't particularly close either: Stephen Gogolev, who won Canada's only individual medal of the season (and the first of his career) with a bronze in Finland two weeks ago, finished 13th in the men's standings. Madeline Schizas was 21st in the women's. They'll compete for Canada's lone entry in each of the Olympic solo events at next month's national championships, but whoever emerges will not have much hope for a medal in Italy.
However, Canada does have two strong contenders in the partner events, and they both qualified for the Grand Prix Final. Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier are seeded fourth in the ice dance while Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps are fifth in the pairs after they each won a gold and a silver on the tour this season.
Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps took bronze at the Final two years ago before turning in the performance of their lives at the 2024 world championships in their home town of Montreal, where they captured Canada's first figure skating world title in six years. Their momentum carried over into the 2024-25 season as they won both of their regular Grand Prix starts and became eligible to compete for Canada at the Olympics when the Chicago-born Stellato-Dudek received her Canadian citizenship.
But health issues and inconsistent performances dogged the duo in the championship portion of last season. A Deschamps illness forced them out of the Grand Prix Final, and a hard fall during practice by Stellato-Dudek threw them off ahead of the worlds in Boston, where the defending champs finished a disappointing fifth.
Age is a concern for this pair as Stellato-Dudek, the oldest woman ever to win a figure skating world title, is now 42 and Deschamps turns 34 later this month. But they showed they're still elite by taking silver at the Grand Prix opener in France before upgrading to gold in Saskatoon a couple of weeks later.
WATCH | Logging Grand Prix final predictions on That Figure Skating Show:The 2025 ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating is upon us and Asher Hill & Kaetlyn Osmond are here to provide their educated guesses on who they think will top the podium. Watch the Grand Prix final live on CBC Gem Dec. 4-7, 2025.The favourites for the pairs gold at the Grand Prix Final are Japan's Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara. They've captured two of the last three world titles and won both of their Grand Prix assignments, including a victory over Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps in Finland.
Gilles and Poirier are getting up there too. They'll both be 34 by the time the Olympics arrive, and they've indicated this could be their last season together. But they've shown no major signs of decline, reaching the podium at four of the last five world championships, including silvers in 2024 and 2025. On the Grand Prix tour, they won gold at Skate Canada and silver in Finland for the second straight year.
Gilles and Poirier won the Final in 2022 and took bronze in '23 before their medal streak ended with a fifth-place finish last year after Poirier tripped on the boards during their short program. They've finished out of the running at their two Olympic appearances to date, placing eighth in 2018 and seventh in 2022, but they've elevated their game since then.
The dance team to beat is the U.S. married couple of Madison Chock and Evan Bates. After finishing fourth at the 2022 Games in Beijing, they've won the last three world titles and two straight Grand Prix Finals.
There's another Canadian to keep an eye on.
Chock and Bates weren't the only team to go undefeated on the Grand Prix tour this season. France's top ice dance duo of Laurence Fournier-Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron also won both of their assignments, including a victory over Gilles and Poirier at the regular-season finale in Finland.
If those names sound familiar, but maybe not as a pairing, here's why:
The Montreal-born Fournier-Beaudry competed for Canada until 2024, when her skating partner, Nikolaj Soerensen, received a six-year suspension for "sexual maltreatment" of an American coach and former skater a dozen years earlier. The ban was overturned by an arbitrator this past June. But by that time, Fournier-Beaudry had teamed up with Cizeron, a Frenchman who won five world titles and a 2022 Olympic gold during his electric partnership with Gabriella Papadakis. At the 2018 Games in South Korea, "Pap and Ciz" were the main rivals of Canadian greats Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, who beat the French duo by less than a point for their second and final Olympic title.
After coming out of retirement to join Fournier Beaudry, Cizeron has a chance to become the first person to win Olympic ice dance gold with two different partners. They're eligible to compete for France after Fournier Beaudry got her French citizenship last month.
Ilia Malinin can't lose (we think).
In the men's event, all eyes will be on American superstar Ilia Malinin, who hasn't lost a competition in more than two years. The Quad God has won back-to-back world titles and is heavily favoured to add his third straight Grand Prix Final title after winning his assignments in France and Canada. In Saskatoon, he broke his own free-skate world-record score without even performing his signature quadruple axel — a jump that no other athlete has landed in competition.
Malinin, who turned 21 this week, plans to make up for that at the Final by attempting a quad axel in both his short and free skates. That will give us a taste of what to expect in his Olympic debut this February.
Japanese skaters could dominate the women's event on home ice after Mone Chiba won both of her Grand Prix starts and Kaori Sakamoto earned the second seed with a gold and a silver. But the U.S. has the reigning Grand Prix champion in Amber Glenn and the reigning world champ in Alysa Liu, whose surprising victory in Boston prevented Sakamoto from winning her fourth straight world title.
Also look out for Japan's 17-year-old Ami Maki, who upset Sakamoto to win the Grand Prix opener in France before placing third to Chiba in Canada.
How to watch:
CBC Sports is live-streaming every skate at the Grand Prix Final. The action starts with junior events on Thursday at 1:30 a.m. ET. Senior competition begins with the pairs short program at 5 a.m. ET and continues through Saturday. Here's the full streaming schedule and here's where to check results.
For more on the top medal contenders, watch this video where CBC Sports analysts Asher Hill and Kaetlyn Osmond make their podium picks.