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French figure skaters Guillaume Cizeron and Laurence Fournier Beaudry pulled off an incredible feat on Wednesday, winning Olympic gold in ice dancing after skating together for only a year.
Cizeron (31) and 33-year-old Fournier Beaudry won the title ahead of reigning world champions Madison Chock and Evan Bates from the USA after the free dance final.
Canadians Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier won bronze.
It is Cizeron’s second consecutive Olympics dance on ice gold after winning the title with Gabriella Papadakis at the Beijing Winter Olympics four years ago.
Cizeron and Papadakis retired from competition after their fifth world title in 2022, and he teamed up with his close friend Fournier Beaudry last March.
Cizeron and Fournier Beaudry had a slight 0.46 point lead over the Americans entering the free dance final at the Milano Ice Skating Arena.
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The Americans, friends, training partners in Montreal and rivals of the French, presented fiery flamenco with an orchestral performance of the song “Paint It Black” by the Rolling Stones.
But skating last, the French closed out their competition with a mesmerizing routine set to the powerful soundtrack of the 2022 movie “The Whale.”
They finished 1.43 points ahead of the three-time world champions.
Gilles and Poirier won bronze with their tribute to Vincent van Gogh to the score “Starry, Starry Night,” which received a standing ovation and pushed the Italian pair of Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri into fourth place.
Fournier Beaudry, a Canadian who obtained French citizenship last November, was available following the suspension of her former partner Nikolaj Sorensen, who was implicated in a 2012 sexual assault case in Canada that he denied. Sorensen was in the audience in Milan.
On the way to the Games, the French couple experienced a stormy season.
Three weeks before the Games, they found themselves embroiled in controversy when Papadakis published a book that caused great excitement.
In it, she harshly criticized her former partner, claiming that she was under his “control” while they skated together.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
