Above: Gabriella Papadakis and Madison Hubbell perform together during the Art on Ice tour, where they received rave reviews. Photo credit: Getty Images
By Elvin Walker
At the close of the 2022 Olympic Winter Games in Beijing, Madison Hubbell began to prepare for life after her final curtain call in competitive skating. With just the World Championships in Montpellier, France, left on her schedule, the three-time U.S. ice dance champion and partner Zachary Donohue were preparing to call it a career and move on to new adventures.
Simultaneously, Hubbell’s training mate and close friend, Gabriella Papadakis, was exploring what might come next as her partnership was on a temporary hiatus at the time. The Olympic gold medalist was eager to see what would come next, but she knew that performing was something that she still wanted to explore.
Shortly after winning the silver medal in Montpellier, Hubbell relocated to London, Ontario, to launch a career in coaching and choreography alongside her fiancé Adrián Díaz, and two-time Olympic champion Scott Moir, from Canada. Once settled, Hubbell invited Papadakis to her rink to make good on a promise that they made to each other as training mates.
“We skated together quite some time ago just for fun, and we thought that one day we would like to do it again,” Hubbell said. “It spurred off of the fact that I was not getting to see my friend anymore and missing that daily interaction. I asked her to come visit and work with the athletes on expression since she always had a passion for the artistic side of skating.”
Papadakis accepted the invitation and during her visit, she and Hubbell carved out some time to revisit their partnership on ice. As they experimented on the ice over the next couple of days, they realized how much fun they were having and shared short videos of them skating on social media.
“We just wanted to see what we could do together,” Papadakis said. “When we posted the videos, they were pretty successful and were getting a lot of shares and comments. We realized that people were very into it.”
As the popularity of the videos grew, it was suggested that they could skate in the post-event gala at the 2024 ISU World Figure Skating Championships in Montreal, where they trained alongside each other for so many years. But as fate would have it, Hubbell’s life took an exciting turn as she learned that she was pregnant with her daughter, Chloe, precluding her from taking part in the event.
“In true Gabby fashion she said that we could still do it,” Hubbell said with a laugh. “I said no and that I thought that she was overestimating what I could do at that time. So, we kind of put it off and I don’t think that either of us necessarily had much faith that anything would come to fruition.”
Meanwhile, as Hubbell was settling into her new life as a mom and coach, Papadakis and her longtime partner decided to end their collaboration. With a fire to continue to explore the artistic side of her skating, Papadakis began to seek out opportunities as a soloist in shows. Because she had skated in their world-renowned shows in the past, Papadakis reached out to her connection at Art on Ice and pitched the idea of her and Hubbell performing together.
“She’s such a brilliant performer and when she spoke with her friends at Art on Ice, they seemed quite excited about the idea of her skating in general,” Hubbell said. “They knew that she had moved on from her partnership and asked if she would consider something else. Luckily, Gabby right away said that if she was skating with another woman, that she wanted it to be me if she’s up for it. Of course I was up for it.”
Because of their different schedules and locations, the duo only had about three or four weeks of training time together before heading to Switzerland for the shows in February. Despite the success of their videos, Hubbell and Papadakis did not yet have a full program and still had a lot of work to do to bring their partnership together.
“Though we are retired from competitions, we are still competitive and demanding of ourselves and our work,” Papadakis said. “I cannot speak for Madison, but I know that I was taught to follow my partner, and I was meant to imitate what he’s doing — this kind of passive position. It was something that I got used to and when I started to skate with Madison, it was weird because it was like my body didn’t know how to be assertive.”
As seasoned performers, however, it was not long before both athletes were able to adapt by relying on their strengths as performers and trust through friendship. Despite having different performance styles in their previous partnerships, Hubbell and Papadakis figured out how to use their personal strengths to help this new partnership to blossom.
“We are close in height and weight, so we didn’t necessarily have that traditional perfect size ratio that some say is a huge disadvantage in a partnership,” Hubbell said. “If we were trying to fit the role of traditional ice dancers, then maybe we would have a different approach, but we soon realized that we could lean into our strengths.
I think the main difference was she's very deep in her knees, and I've never performed with someone who was underneath my level in height, so it felt almost like it came more naturally for me to take the leader position. Gabby is such a master of tracking and instinctively being in the right spot without being too forceful.”
For the Art on Ice shows, the duo performed to “Not Loud Enough” by Swiss performer Marius Bear and received quite a positive response.
“The majority of people were very into it and people said that they were excited to see us,” Papadakis said. “We had a lot of media coverage so there was a lot of pressure because we didn’t want to disappoint. We just wanted to deliver a good performance to show that we are still competitive and excited to perform.”
Though the pair currently do not have any further events planned, it is something that they would like to continue to explore should they be given the opportunity.
“People have been asking where they can see us,” Papadakis said. “And we would love to be able to make that happen.”
