Interview Madison Hubbell (English)

In this interview, Madison Hubbell shares her journey from a world-renowned ice dancer to a coach. Embracing significant life changes, including marriage and impending motherhood, Madison discusses her new coaching role, its challenges, and her vision for the future of ice dance.

Solène: How are you?

Madison: I’m good! It's been a hectic few years between finishing my career, retiring, starting a new job, and moving to a new city. In June, Adrià (Diaz) and I got married, and now we're expecting our first child, a girl, at the end of February.

Solène: How is your coaching job going?

Madison: It's great. It feels like it’s still new, but we're getting settled in, and we've been coaching for a year and a half and learning every day. It's a very new skill set. We knew how to teach skating, but there is also the strategy behind it, the management of young people and their psychological development. That's something new for us, and we are trying to learn a little bit the outside perspective because we still have very much the athlete hat on. I'm very fortunate to have a lot of more experienced colleagues. I can stand next to Marie-France (Dubreuil), Patrice (Lauzon), and Romain (Haguenauer) and ask them a million questions, they've been very helpful.

Solène: When did you know that you wanted to become a coach?

Madison: During my last several competitive seasons, I started to understand that it would be a future for me. It was not the case when I was younger, but it also came from not always having the best relationship with my coaching staff. It was sometimes tough, going through teenage years, growing up, and being rebellious. The coaches were very strict, and I only thought the coaches could be positive mentors once I went to Montreal. That is where I started falling in love more with skating. The way they teach in Montreal is very much to empower their athletes. The athletes have a sense of understanding of what they're doing, not just being an athlete and performing the task. It was a bit different for Adrià. He always pictured being a coach. That was his dream all along. He loves skating and watches all the Junior and Senior events in all disciplines. It ignited a new appreciation for me. When Zach and I started working with Scott Moir, I began to know him more and differently as a coach and mentor. Scott was pretty vocal from the beginning: “Just so you know, when you retire, you're welcome to come and join me!”. He started dropping hints little by little, and since I was very vocal about retiring, it made planning much easier.

Solène: Who are you working with in London, Ontario?

Madison: I’m working with Scott, Adrià, and Scott's two cousins, Kara Moir and Sherry Moir. His mother and aunt also help, along with Justin Trojek. We have a big team already, and we are slowly trying to build the cohesive team atmosphere that Montreal has. Building that dynamic takes a long time, but that's the model we're trying to follow.

Solène: How do you split the roles?

Madison: Scott is managing everything as the CEO of the company. Adrià and I are working full-time Monday to Friday. The three of us make up the core of the company. Kara and Sherry are there every week, as well as Justin, but they all have other responsibilities: family, managing a synchro team, or even a remodeling business as far as Justin is concerned. They also support us with all the travel. We need to ensure that we have a support staff around when we're gone. It was a bit nerve-wracking to enter the situation as a first-time coach. It's a very family dynamic. Everybody knew each other already so well. Adrià and I only knew Scott, and it took a little while to build that relationship with everybody, but they're so lovely.

Solène: Who are you currently coaching?

Madison: We have close to ten teams. Internationally, we have Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko. We also have Samantha Ritter and Daniel Brykalov from Azerbaijan, Leia Dozzi and Pietro Papetti from Italy, four senior teams from Canada, and a junior and a novice team from Canada. India Netté and Eron Westwood from Australia just joined. We are slowly building the school and a nice environment. There's always ebbs and flows and people coming, people going. It helps when there's a lot of energy in the rink and many people to focus on. We hope to bring in more novice and junior skaters and develop younger kids.

Solène: How are the teams from Montreal and London working together?

Madison: Every summer, we try to get together for a couple of weeks, getting the expertise from the senior coaches in Montreal at the beginning of the season with concept and development. Then we're constantly in communication, and we try to have a visit from each of them throughout the year for a few days. Marie-France and Romain have come this year, and we're waiting for Patrice’s visit, hopefully in the early wintertime. He's a great technician, so it's great to get him to work on all the turns and levels and get his eye on things. Every once in a while, we get a call asking us to help in Montreal because they have several competitions going on at the same time. It's been fun to step into my old training environment and work with teams I was competing against. For instance we worked with Nikolaj and Laurence for a week. They welcomed me into their team and asked my opinion about their skating.

Solène: Speaking about your former competitors, were you surprised that Madison Chock and Evan Bates decided to continue competing after winning the World Championships?

Madison: Not really. They were definitely in a different place than we were. They more recently moved to Montreal, and they were starting to get really comfortable and happy with their training. It takes a few years to adjust to a new coaching team and to get rid of whatever old past demons you have behind you. They were starting to enjoy the training process, which Zach and I felt after a few years in Montreal. Also, it’s so different when you train with your life partner. For them to travel together, be together all the time, and do tours together adds another layer of longevity. Adrià and I were excited to move on, get married and to have children.

Solène: What do you think about the 80s theme for the rhythm dance? Would you have liked to skate on it?

Madison: There's a lot of music in the 80s I would have loved to skate to. I wonder if any other decade would work quite as well. Probably not. From a spectator's point of view, there's a lot of variety. It's been an exploration for the skaters, the coaches, and ISU because we come from different generations. Many of the choreographers are from a younger generation than the judges, so the memory of the 80s is very different. I wasn't alive and I can only take my parents' word for what happened in the 80s. No matter what research you do, capturing what the ISU feels is the essence of the 80s has been hard. Understanding what will score well has been challenging because my impression of the 80s may be inaccurate. It comes from people dressing up as the 80s for Halloween (laughs). 

Solène: You had a project with Gabriella Papadakis to skate together, and we saw a video of the two of you. Would you like to resume this project later on?

Madison: I would love to get back to skating and do shows with Zachary or Gabriella. Gabriella and I are very good friends, and we always had the dream that we would do some tours together. It’s, however, logistically very challenging as we live in different cities. She came to visit. We've skated together two times. One time was in collaboration with Jordan Cowan and Talia Barrington from On Ice Perspectives, filming us. Before getting pregnant, we discussed that it would be possible to do an exhibition, maybe at the World Championships. We both think the idea of same-gender couples is really interesting. Nobody knows what it could hold. We don't know if it would be more or less challenging for men or women, but many people have opinions about it. For us, it was an experiment. Many of the opinions we heard, especially from the judging community, were that men would have a clear advantage. I'm not sure that that's true. It will always depend on the size ratios and what's required. We don't know the rules yet, but I don't think making that assumption is correct. We've been trying to get some young athletes to explore that, especially when waiting for partners. There are a lot of young women waiting for the few men that are available on the market. But it's hard, you have to be a pretty daring person to take that first step and be the first team. We need some very bold women to step into those shoes.

Solène: Stéphane Lambiel and Guillaume Cizeron also experimented it. What did you think of it?

Madison: They're two beautiful skaters. It was artistic, gorgeous, and vibrant. I was very curious to see them skate, because we were told it would be more interesting to have two men skating together than two women because a man can lift the other man. They can do tricks. They're already strong and know those skills, but Stéphane and Guillaume didn't do any partnered tricks that required lifting or spinning with each other. I want to see if Guillaume can lift Stéphane. The feedback we got on our video with Gabriella was very mixed. Many people were saying that two women can't skate together, that there's no elegance to it. When Guillaume and Stéphane skated together, every comment was about how gorgeous they were and how amazing it was to see two men skate together. 

Solène: It’s sad to hear you got some negative feedback.

Madison: Some cultures just aren't as open. Some people didn’t want to see it. For them, a woman capable of lifting another loses all femininity. I, of course, disagree. We've dealt with the clashes of culture forever in skating. Do we believe that skating should be a derivative of very classical ballet and should not sway away from those ideals or is it a place to expand the art, transform and show other ideas? Well, you know what I think about it.

Solène MATHIEU for Patinage Magazine