Who to watch at the figure skating world championships

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 World Figure Skating Championships are always a big deal. And this year's edition, starting Wednesday in Boston, carries more weight than usual.

In addition to deciding this season's world champions (and silver and bronze medallists), the next five days of competition will determine how many entries each country receives for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy.

We'll get into how that works later. But first, let's look at who to watch.

Canadians to watch

Last year in Montreal, the pairs team of Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps thrilled the adoring crowd by capturing Canada's first figure skating world title since 2018, while ice dancers Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier earned a silver for their third worlds medal in four years.

These two duos remain Canada's top medal contenders this week in Boston, and that will likely be the case for the Olympics too.

Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps started this season strong, winning both of their Grand Prix assignments in the fall. More good news came in December when the Chicago-born Stellato-Dudek finally became a Canadian citizen, clearing the way for the Montreal resident to compete for Canada at the Olympics (citizenship requirements for other international skating events are less stringent).

The Figure Skating Show | Previewing the 2025 world championships:

But health issues have dogged them since then. A Deschamps illness forced them out of the Grand Prix Final in December, and their preparations for last month's Four Continents championships were affected when Stellato-Dudek took a hard fall in practice and badly bruised her backside. A rough short program put the Canadians behind the eight ball before they rebounded with their best free skate of the season to climb to the silver behind 2023 world champs Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara of Japan.

Gilles and Poirier are the premier Canadian ice dancers of the post-Virtue and Moir era. They've won four consecutive national titles (excluding their absence in 2023, when Gilles was recovering from surgery for ovarian cancer) and reached the podium at the world championships in 2021 (bronze), 2023 (bronze again) and 2024 (silver).

Though they didn't finish better than seventh in their two Olympic appearances, Gilles and Poirier won the prestigious Grand Prix Final two seasons ago. They took gold and silver in their two regular Grand Prix events this season before finishing fifth in the Final after Poirier tripped on the boards during their short program. But the Canadians repeated as Four Continents champions last month, narrowly defeating reigning world champs Madison Chock and Evan Bates of the United States.

WATCH | Stellato-Dudek, Deschamps honoured to represent Canada:

Canada has another solid ice dance team in Marjorie Lajoie and Zachary Lagha, who finished fifth at last year's worlds and just took bronze at the Four Continents for the second time. The other Canadian ice dancers competing this week are Alicia Fabbri and Paul Ayer, who are making their worlds debut.