It begins on a thin silver blade, tracing lines across continents and languages, eventually arriving at an ice rink in Montreal. Along the way, a mother’s early love for skating becomes a compass. A boy raised to pursue perfection learns instead to listen — to rhythm, to breath, to the fragile truths held in a moving body.

What follows is not just the story of a skater, but the rebuilding of a legacy. A journey that breaks down rigid systems in favor of pure movement. That trades medals for meaning. That asks what happens when art stops serving scores and starts serving the soul. 

It is early-morning noise and the hush of empty arenas. It is pain and the relief of letting go. And it is the work that endures: advocacy, community, a wider ice — for all who were once left out in the cold.

This is Elladj Baldé: carving new lines through frozen time, showing us what it looks like when a life finally begins to move in the direction of its own joy.

Frozen Genealogical Lines

“My father came from a small village tucked deep in the mountains of Guinea — a place with no electricity, no running water. He grew up in close connection to nature and family, and from a young age, he understood that education was the only possible path to a different life. He was hard on himself, deeply disciplined, always striving to be at the top of his class — not for ambition alone, but as a way to create opportunities for himself and for those he loved.

In the 1970s and ’80s, a program allowed a select group of African students to study in the Soviet Union. Only the top 10 university graduates in the entire country could qualify. My father was one of them. He left Guinea in 1979 and did his studies in Tashkent — then part of the USSR, now Uzbekistan — where he met my mother, a Russian woman who was also pursuing her university studies.

Around 1990, my older sister became gravely ill. She was diagnosed with leukemia, which led my parents to move to Moscow to seek better treatment. That’s where I was born — not by chance, but out of necessity. Eventually, they relocated to Germany, hoping for access to superior pediatric care. Despite everything they tried, she passed away a year later.

My mother had been a figure skater growing up, skating until the age of 12, when her family moved to Tashkent. There were no rinks there, so she stopped — but the passion never left her. My sister was the first serious skater in the family. She used to tell my mom that when I was older, she’d be the one to teach me how to skate. When she died, I was just 10 months old. That passing of the torch never happened in person, but I’ve always felt her presence — especially when I’m on the ice.

We eventually left Germany and moved to Montreal when I was two years old, seeking not only a new beginning, but a place to grow.”

A Difficult Relationship

“At first, my mom encouraged me to explore music and the arts. She tried to teach me piano, but I had too much energy. I wanted to backflip over the piano, not sit still and play it. Then she tried gymnastics — but that didn’t quite fit either. Finally, she introduced me to skating. The moment I stepped onto the ice, something clicked. I was comfortable. I could move freely. I picked up tricks and spins quickly. In those early days, it was all joy — just skating around, smiling, feeling free. But that joy didn’t last long.

I started seriously skating at age 6. By 6 and a half, I was already training under a Russian coach and competing. Very quickly, it became less about joy and more about performance. It wasn’t that I didn’t like skating — I just didn’t like the culture surrounding it. In Russian sports, the mentality is clear: if you’re not doing it to be the best, you’re wasting your time. That intensity was impressed upon me at seven years old, when people started telling me I was destined to be an Olympic champion. That became the goal. The only goal.

But the pressure didn’t sit well with me. I remember hiding my skates in the closet and telling my mom I’d lost them. At my first competition, we arrived at an empty rink. I was thrilled — maybe we were too late and I wouldn’t have to skate. Turns out, we were just early. I still had to compete. Still, I kept going.

I was athletic, I loved movement, and I worked my way up — from single jumps to doubles, then triples. I started landing elements other kids couldn’t yet. I realized I was good. I started winning. And with every milestone, I became more motivated to keep chasing that original dream — to be the best. To go to the Olympics. To give everything I had to that one idea.”

Disconnect to Reconnect

“My relationship with figure skating was never simple. On one hand, there was my truth—what I believed in, what I wanted to express on the ice. On the other, there was the rigid framework of competitive figure skating: strict, codified, unbending. Balancing the two was never easy. In order to succeed, I felt I had to abandon parts of myself. I had to adapt, mold, conform.

Since childhood, I’ve loved to move—to dance, to express emotions through my body. Silencing that side of me in order to fit into the system never felt right. But I did it anyway. Because winning mattered. For a long time, it was the only thing that mattered.

I chased medals. I won national titles. I represented my country internationally. On paper, I was doing all the ‘right’ things. But inside, I felt hollow. There was a part of me that felt like it was dying a little more every day. I didn’t fully realize it until 2014, when I failed to make the Olympic team. That internal dissonance stretched all the way to 2018, when I retired from competition.

Shortly after missing the Olympics, I traveled to Africa to meet my father, my grandfather, and extended family. That trip changed everything. I began to reconnect with something deeper—beyond skating, beyond performance. I realized that the pursuit of Olympic glory wasn’t my path, and more importantly, it wasn’t what would bring me joy.

I began asking different questions: What do I want to say? What do I want people to remember after watching me skate? How do I want them to feel? That was the shift. It stopped being about medals and started being about meaning. I began to rediscover myself—not just as a skater, but as an artist.

When you suppress something for so long, you lose touch with it. You begin to forget it was ever there. Bringing it back to the surface takes deep self-awareness and patience. Along the way, I battled my own inner critic, the voices that echoed everything I’d been told growing up. That I wasn’t enough. That there was only one way to succeed. Undoing that programming was a dark and difficult path—but it led me to myself.

That’s the journey: deconstructing an identity built for success and rebuilding one grounded in authenticity. It allowed me to truly express myself on the ice—and more importantly, off it. I realized I didn’t need results to be worthy. I didn’t need someone else’s label to define my value. During the pandemic, I began sharing videos of myself skating on social media. That was the moment everything changed.

Looking back, it all makes sense. At the time, I didn’t understand why things were unfolding the way they were. But now I see—they unfolded exactly as they needed to.”

Express Yourself and Feel the Love

“I carry so much gratitude for how people have responded to my authenticity on the ice. Before I began making those videos, I was terrified. No one had ever done what I was about to do: skate in baggy jeans and varsity jackets, move to hip-hop and R&B, perform for the camera, and share it with the world. I had no idea how it would be received—or if it would be received at all.

My wife was instrumental in helping me overcome that fear. She encouraged me to try, to just see how it felt. And from the first video, something inside me lit up. I tapped into a part of myself I hadn’t felt since I was 6 years old—skating outside with my mom, completely free.

There’s no perfect way to describe it. It’s a connection so deep, it fills me with love and joy I didn’t know I could access through skating. If you’d told me during my competitive career that I’d feel this way because of skating—not despite it—I wouldn’t have believed you.

It’s the greatest gift I’ve ever received. And I want to keep showing up in that way, because I know it has the power to inspire the next generation—especially Black, Indigenous, and other skaters of color. I want them to see that you can be yourself. You can be different. You can break the mold, and that difference will be celebrated—if it comes from a place of grounded, honest integrity.

Yes, the results might come. But if you focus on fulfillment, everything else becomes easier. And infinitely more meaningful.”

Bigger Issues

“Despite all the love and acceptance I’ve received online in recent years, my journey hasn’t always been easy—especially growing up in a world that still clings to outdated gender stereotypes, particularly in figure skating.

For most of my life, I suppressed the pain caused by how people perceived me. I’ve been called a monkey because of how I carried myself on the ice. I’ve been mocked and belittled, simply because I didn’t fit into someone else’s idea of how a male athlete should look or move. Even off the ice, it followed me. Strangers would ask what sport I did, and when I answered ‘figure skating,’ I’d be met with dismissive looks. ‘That’s a women’s sport,’ they’d say. The judgment on their faces was so constant, so discouraging, that I started lying. I told people I did football, basketball, or track—anything but the truth. I just didn’t want to see that look anymore.

I still struggle to understand how society can gender a sport. Movement, physicality, expression—none of that is inherently masculine or feminine. But in figure skating, especially for men, there’s this fear surrounding softness. We’re told men must be hard, tough, invulnerable. And if you’re soft—if you’re expressive, emotional, fluid—you’re seen as weak. But the truth is, that softness is a profound strength. It’s the rawest form of authenticity. 

To be fully human, you have to allow yourself to feel—and to express those feelings. When we suppress that, we disconnect from ourselves in fundamental ways. I didn’t understand that as a child. I just felt shame. I’ll never forget winning my first competition at age 8. I was so proud—still wearing my costume and medal—when I ran to show my friend. He laughed at me for how I was dressed. That moment crushed something inside me. I started to believe there was something wrong with me. And it wasn’t just a one-time thing—it became a recurring experience throughout my life.

It’s taken me years to sit with my masculinity and redefine for myself what it means to be a man. It took a long time—years of self-reflection and unlearning—but I’m finally in a place where I’m comfortable with who I am. Where I no longer see softness as something to hide, but something to honor.

Too many young boys walk away from figure skating because of this type of ridicule—because of bullying, ignorance, and shame. I want to change that. I want to change how society sees skating, so that kids can feel free to explore it, embrace it, and thrive in it without having to hide who they are.”

Doing Better for the Youths

“During my life I’ve worked on different major projects: the Figure Skating Diversity and Inclusion Alliance, the Skate Global Foundation, and the Art of Performance, are the most important ones.

The first came about in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. For many people, that moment marked a turning point—a reckoning. The world was finally forced to confront the realities that Black communities have known and lived with for generations. Within the figure skating world, many of us—Black skaters from around the globe—began opening up to each other about our experiences. Until then, we hadn’t even spoken about it amongst ourselves. That silence broke, and what emerged was a shared understanding that regardless of whether we came from Canada, the U.S., Europe, or Africa, our stories echoed each other.

The Figure Skating Diversity and Inclusion Alliance was born out of those conversations. We wanted to create a safe space to share, but more than that, we wanted action. We felt the organizations we were a part of weren’t doing enough—not truly supporting their athletes in a meaningful way. So we began pushing for accountability and change. I’m proud to say that Skate Canada eventually recognized us as one of the driving forces behind their new policies around diversity and inclusion. Real progress was made—and we’re still working to make more.

Me and my wife launched The Art of Performance in 2019, and after a pandemic pause, in 2024 we brought it back. It’s a figure skating camp and we train them on the technical side, but the root of the camp is how to develop yourself as an artist and as a human being. It’s really going to the depths of who you are as a person and letting that come through as an artist on the ice—finding your own voice, reconnecting with artistry, allowing yourself to move.

We bring coaches from all over the world—Olympic champions, world champions—people who can bridge the gap between those who’ve had success in the sport and the next generation. We share directly from our experience. We go vulnerable. We talk about what we struggled with and how we overcame it. We see kids transform. They arrive looking and feeling a certain way—by the end of the week they’re different skaters and different people. We allowed them to feel good enough as they are. We helped them feel seen, to connect at a deeper level. That opens something inside. Suddenly they try jumps they’ve never tried. By the end of the week some are landing triples for the first time.Our goal is to expand—potentially across the country and around the world to create a community of skaters from different places who learn together—a healthy, beautiful community we all wish we had growing up. 

But I also wanted to address a different issue: access. Figure skating is expensive. Ice time, equipment, coaching—it’s a barrier that shuts out so many young people, especially in marginalized communities. So my wife Michelle and I created the Skate Global Foundation, which focuses on making skating more accessible.

One of our first projects was refurbishing a rink in an underserved Canadian neighborhood. We partnered with a construction company, donated 50 pairs of skates, and created a space where kids could come try skating for free—no financial burden, no pressure, just the joy of discovering something new. We also started offering direct financial support to up-and-coming athletes of color. This year, we awarded $3,000 each to three young skaters to help ease the costs of pursuing their Olympic dreams. I know firsthand how important that kind of support is. If it hadn’t been for the kindness of coaches who charged us less—or for my mom getting up at 5 a.m. to take me on the bus to practice—I never would have made it.

Now, the three skaters we’ve supported are on track to potentially compete at the Olympics this winter. That’s what it’s all about. I hope these programs grow and continue to reach more kids. It’s so important to help young people recognize and embrace what makes them unique—to identify their gifts and share them, unapologetically, with the world.

Especially in figure skating, we all carry different stories, different backgrounds. That diversity is what makes the sport beautiful. If we can encourage kids to lead with their authenticity—not hide it—we’ll not only change skating. We’ll change lives.”