One month ago, Canadian ice dancers Marjorie Lajoie and Zachary Lagha finished tenth at the 2026 Olympics in Milano, Italy. It was not the result the Canadian silver medalists were hoping for in their second Olympic Games.
Lajoie and Lagha, widely seen as rising stars in the sport, had been on a roll the past few years, placing 5th and 7th at the last two World Championships. The duo’s quicksilver speed, sparkling musicality, and unique charisma have made them favorites among fans (who have nicknamed them “LaLa”). In addition to their Worlds placements, the duo have twice qualified for the Grand Prix Final and won two Four Continents bronze medals.
With all this behind them, it’s not surprising that Lajoie and Lagha were disappointed with their Olympic result.
Olympic takeaways
“It was heartbreaking,” Marjorie Lajoie admitted during an interview this week at the 2026 iSU World Championships in Prague, Czechia. Her usual megawatt smile dimmed for a moment as she spoke.
“I think that every bad result is a wake-up call. So we had ours, and we’re looking forward to compete here now,” Zak Lagha said soberly.
The team feels it’s important to take the right message from their Olympic experience. They want to learn from the experience, not just react to it. When asked if they felt their scores in Milano were fair, and accurately reflected their skating, Lagha answered without hesitation.
“I agree with it. You should not focus on what the judges should see in you. You should focus on what the judges don’t see in you,” Lagha said. “When you focus on this, you’re like, ‘Okay then, I understand why I have this amount of points.’”
“It was a good wake-up call, just in general,” Lajoie agreed. “Like Zak said, it’s working on what they don’t see [in us]. Since the Olympics, we’ve been working really, really hard. So we’re almost grateful, because we’re going to grow even more than if we had good results. We were more motivated afterward.”
Lajoie and Lagha focused especially on improving their 1990s sports-themed rhythm dance.
“We made some changes [in order to skate] deeper in the knee, with more attack and aggressivity. We did more run-throughs than usual, as well,” Lagha said.
Finding a true comfort level with their programs this season has been challenging.
“If you don’t trust your program, if you don’t like it … We had that a bit, at the beginning of the season,” Lajoie said.
Looking for the right programs
The team’s original free dance music for this season didn’t work out due to copyright issues. Their next selection was music by Johann Sebastian Bach. Initially, this seemed like an auspicious choice, particularly since Bach is a favorite composer of Lagha (who is a classical pianist). However, the Bach free dance failed to gel. Lajoie and Lagha performed it at Skate Canada’s High Performance Camp in late August, but decided to drop it soon afterward.
“We felt rushed. It was too quick,” Lajoie said of their creative process building the Bach free dance. “I didn’t connect with the storytelling. I thought it was too fast [in tempo]. We couldn’t show our good skating skills that we’ve worked for.”
“It’s such nice music, but it was also hard to skate to,” Lagha agreed. “You need to make strategic choices.”
“The package, we didn’t feel it,” Lajoie said. “I’m grateful that we had the space to tell Marie-France [Dubreuil], ‘Hey, this doesn’t work.’ She was open, and said we could find a free dance from the past four years that we really liked and bring [it] back. We were really happy with this decision.”
The team’s “White Crow” Nureyev program was a breakthrough piece for them during the 2022-23 season, but they didn’t get a chance to perform it at Worlds that year, due to Canada having only two ice dance spots. They decided to bring back “White Crow,” partly so it could have its moment on the big stage.
During these free dance changes, Lajoie and Lagha worked closely with Dubreuil, who is one of three head coaches at Ice Academy of Montreal (I.AM). Previously, the duo had worked most frequently with Romain Haguenauer, another head coach at I.AM. For a time period during this current season, Lajoie and Lagha’s ISU bio listed Haguenauer as their former coach.
“That was a mistake. I don’t know how it happened,” Lagha said, when asked about this listing in their bio. (It has since been updated.) “We’re working with the people of the [I.AM] school. It’s like, everybody works together. So yes, we’re still his students.”
Lajoie and Lagha are not sure yet which coach they will work with on choreography for next season. Since the Olympics, their focus has been entirely on the World Championships.
Next season: Just around the corner
The 2026-27 rhythm dance will feature a compulsory pattern, for the first time in five years. It’s a major change for the sport, especially since the chosen compulsory–the Golden Waltz–is generally considered one of the most difficult patterns.
“I think it’s a good thing,” Lagha said of the return of the compulsory. “I think a lot of fans like it. It’s all about how we approach it, and what they are going to be looking for in the compulsory–like, a nice, standard position, or the size of the pattern? This is the most important stuff to me: What are they going to be looking for?”
“I can’t wait to try it,” Lajoie said of the Golden Waltz. “Everybody’s like, ‘Oh, it’s very hard.’ So I can’t wait to learn the steps and try the dance and see how it goes. I think it’s good.’”
Lajoie and Lagha enjoyed skating other compulsory waltzes during their junior career. However, since the Golden Waltz is a senior-only pattern, they have no experience with this particular compulsory.
The couple is excited for next season, and for the next four-year Olympic cycle. However, they don’t yet have an overarching plan for the next quad, or specific placement goals.
“Inspiring people, and making good things with our skating, I think that’s the main goal,” Lajoie said. “It’s about creating our own branding and connection, and having good programs that we believe in, and then maybe results will come.”
For Lagha, finding fulfillment in skating is, at the moment, a more important goal than aspiring to set records or win specific titles.
“There’s some skaters I thought were amazing, but they don’t have the results. It’s not in our control,” he noted. “I’d rather inspire people and just be a good person and have people enjoy watching me skate than try to be ‘the greatest.’”
The team’s experiences over this past Olympic cycle–particularly the battle to come back from Lajoie’s concussion during the 2023-24 season–have influenced their outlook going forward. They have high hopes, yet know that success doesn’t necessarily come easily.
“The last four years were a lot of ups and downs,” Lagha said. “I think the biggest lesson in this, for me, is that we’re able to push for podiums in the future. We have the skill, and now we just need to be more pro[active] and get good programs, and I think we have everything. That’s what we’ve learned from the past four years.”
Sometimes the biggest challenges go hand-in-hand with the greatest successes, and such was the case for Lajoie and Lagha in 2024, when the World Championships came to their home city of Montreal, Quebec. The team were having one of their best seasons to date, and looking forward to the home Worlds, when Lajoie suffered a major concussion in training that winter. Somehow, they were able to come back in time and not only competed, but placed top 5, at Montreal Worlds.
“Injuries are the biggest low, because you have no choice but to stop and respect your body,” Lajoie said. “Then, the highs are proving to yourself that you can come back from it and have good results. So, the biggest high was Worlds in Montreal, after we had the injury.”
“We usually go competition by competition, year by year, because what you need to work on in three years is not the same thing that you need to work on next year,” Lagha noted. “We’ll see after Worlds; we’ll do the analysis that we didn’t do yet.”
What’s important off the ice
When they’re not skating, Lajoie and Lagha keep themselves busy with their own personal projects and passions.
Lagha expects to finish his degree at Concordia University next year. He is studying piano at university, and has plans to hopefully participate in a piano competition in Spain this summer, in which he would play baroque and romantic classical music pieces.
Lajoie, meanwhile, continues her interest in autism advocacy work. It’s a cause that means a lot to her personally, because her younger brother, Charles, is autistic. In summer 2024, Lajoie produced a skating show to benefit the Fondation Autiste & Majeur (Autism & Adult Foundation) in Montreal. It was a special experience for both her and Charles.
“He wanted to help, and he was there from the beginning to the end,” Lajoie said of her brother, who also attended the Olympics recently to support her. “He loves skating, and he loves talking to people. He’s very social. At the Olympics, they asked him about this show. And he’s not very emotional [usually], but he started to cry. He realized that it’s for him–for everybody [with autism]–but for him, too. It was nice to see that he was really touched by it.”
Lajoie is hoping to produce another benefit show for the foundation this summer, although it will depend on scheduling demands.
First things first, though. Right now for Lajoie and Lagha, it’s all about this week’s World Championships and ending the season with renewed energy.
