Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron arrived at the Milan Cortina Olympics amid a swirl of controversy.
According to Associated Press, the French ice dancers were hoping to upset the dominant American duo of Madison Chock and Evan Bates when it mattered most and they did it!
Beaudry and Cizeron answered a season-best free dance by Chock and Bates with a season best of their own Wednesday night, giving them 225.82 points and the top step of the podium. Chock and Bates finished with 224.39 and a bittersweet silver medal after having lost just four times in the four years since they finished fourth at the Beijing Games.
“We’re still in shock,” said Cizeron, who also became the first skater to win back-to-back ice dance gold with different partners, having won previously with Gabriella Papadakis. “Looking back a year ago, when we started dreaming this, it’s pretty incredible.”
Cizeron made several mistakes, including a glaring one during his twizzle sequence, while Chock and Bates were nearly perfect.
Yet the French judge favored the French skaters by nearly eight points in the free dance, while five of the nine judges favored the American team. The other three that gave top marks to Guillaume and Cizeron did so by a slim margin.
“I feel like in life, sometimes you can feel like you do everything right and it doesn’t go your way, and that’s life in sports. It’s a subjective sport. It is a judged sport. But I think one fact that is indisputable is that we delivered our best. We skated our best,” said Bates.
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.
