A dazzling skate by Deanna Stellato-Dudek. a lady of a certain age. . .(and her partner, Maxime Deschamps)

Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps erupt with joy after seeing their scores in the short program at the World Championships. (NBC photo)

MONTREAL – Pairs’ skater Deanna Stellato-Dudek is the grande dame of competitive figure skating, trying to become, at age 40, the oldest skater to win a world title in any discipline in decades.

“You know,” she said, “there’s no points in figure skating for being older.”

She and her 32-year-old partner, Maxime Deschamps, got plenty of them Wednesday with the best short program performance of their three international competition seasons together.

Their 77.48 points gave the Canadians a 3.95-point lead going into Thursday night’s free skate over defending champions Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara of Japan, who only last month came back after his back injury threatened to end their season.

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