Madeline Schizas, a student of Urban Planning at the Faculty of Environment, Waterloo talks about her experience at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics
What a milestone achievement for Madeline Schizas, a student of Urban Planning at the Faculty of Environment, Waterloo! She competed at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics recording a personal best of 69.60 points in the women’s short program portion.
Schizas is a competitive skater. The 19-year-old from Oakville, Ontario in her first Olympics accomplishment lifted Canada to fourth from sixth and moved the country into the five-team final round of the figure skating.
“There was a lot of pressure on that skate because I was the last person to go in that section of the team event,” said Schizas. “Everyone kept telling me that it's not my job to bring everyone to the free skate, but you know that at that point it was on me.”
Schizas was Canada’s only competitor in the women's singles skating. She proved herself as a bright spot in the competition in numerous occasions especially dealing with the pressure of carrying the whole team.
“I think one of my strengths as an athlete is just being able to keep a cool head under pressure, and I'm good at distracting myself, staying in the moment and focusing on what I need to do instead of what others are going to do,” said Schizas.
She began learning figure skating at the age of three and competed for the first time at age six. She was selected as one of Canada’s two entries for the 2021 World Championships and will represent the country again in the 2022 edition.
In other roles, she’s a piano teacher and has starred as a stunt double in the Netflix film Spinning Out.
Madeline Schizas, a first-year student in planning, recently competed in the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Listen to her interview in episode 119 of the Beyond the Bulletin podcast to learn more about ways she balancing skating and her studies.
Photo credit: Greg Kolz / Skate Canada
