02/11/26 04:23:00
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02/11 16:22 CST French duo Beaudry and Cizeron beat American stars Chock and
Bates for Olympic ice dance gold
French duo Beaudry and Cizeron beat American stars Chock and Bates for Olympic
ice dance gold
By DAVE SKRETTA
AP Sports Writer
MILAN (AP) --- The new French ice dance team of Laurence Fournier Beaudry and
Guillaume Cizeron upset the dominant team of the past four years, American
stars Madison Chock and Evan Bates, and claimed Olympic gold at the Milan
Cortina Games on Wednesday night.
Beaudry and Cizeron had to follow a season-best performance by the three-time
reigning world champions, and they did it with near perfection. The duo was
rewarded with a season-best 225.82 points of their own while Chock and Bates
finished with 224.39, making Cizeron the first skater to win back-to-back ice
dance gold with different partners.
The Canadian team of Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier earned the bronze medal with
217.74 points, pulling away from the Italian team of Charlene Guignard and
Marco Fabbri and the British duo of Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson with a deeply
emotional free skate.
As for Beaudry and Cizeron, they arrived in Milan with controversy stemming
from their ex-partners swirling around them.
This time last year, Beaudry was wondering whether she would even compete this
season after Skate Canada banned her partner and longtime boyfriend, Nikolaj
Sorensen, amid allegations of "sexual maltreatment." Beaudry has steadfastly
maintained his innocence and the suspension was overturned in June on
jurisdictional grounds, but the case is still pending.
Cizeron stepped away from competition after the 2022 season, when he won
Olympic gold with Gabriella Papadakis. But the chance to make a comeback with
Beaudry, who was ninth with Sorensen at the Beijing Games, was too good to pass
up.
Beaudry and Cizeron won every event they entered this season save the Grand
Prix Final, when they finished second to Chock and Bates in their only previous
head-to-head meeting. But their smooth ride to Milan was shaken up when
Papadakis wrote in her new memoir that Cizeron had been demanding, controlling
and manipulative toward her --- accusations he called a "smear campaign."
The French team hardly seemed distracted by any of it Monday night, when it
edged Chock and Bates in the rhythm dance.
Beaudry and Cizeron most definitely were not distracted by anything Wednesday
night.
It would have been easy to be thrown off by the way Chock and Bates performed
in the minutes before they stepped on the ice.
The two-time Olympic gold medalists in the team event --- performing to an
instrumental version of "Paint it Black" from the dystopian sci-fi show
"Westworld" --- turned in the kind of program they have spent the last 15 years
together working toward. Every movement seemed to be in perfect harmony, and
the flamenco-styled choreography had the crowd clapping along with them.
The only question left was whether the husband-wife team, who had finished a
maddening fourth in the individual ice dance at the Beijing Games, had done
enough to earn the one medal that had forever eluded them.
It looked as if Beaudry and Cizeron gave them an opening with a bobble on their
twizzles. But they soon settled into their program, set to the soundtrack from
"The Whale," and moved as if they were under water with a marvelous degree of
refined elegance.
As their winning score was read, Chock and Bates joined the crowd inside the
Milano Ice Skating Arena in applauding them.
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AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
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