French Figure skaters Guillaume Cizeron and Laurence Fournier Beaudry pulled off an incredible feat and won on Wednesday Olympic Gold in ice dancing after skating together for just a year.
The 31-year-old Cizeron and the 33-year-old Fournier Beaudry won the title after the free dance final ahead of the reigning world champions Madison Chock and Evan Bates from the USA.
Canadians Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier took bronze.
For Cizeron it is the second Olympics in a row Ice dance Gold after winning the Beijing Winter Olympics title four years ago with Gabriella Papadakis.
Cizeron and Papadakis withdrew from competition after their fifth world title in 2022 and he teamed up with close friend Fournier Beaudry last March.
Cizeron and Fournier Beaudry had a narrow lead of 0.46 points over the Americans before the free skate final at the Milano Ice Skating Arena.
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The Americans, friends, training partners in Montreal and rivals of the French, presented a fiery flamenco to an orchestral version of the Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black.”
But the French finished last with a mesmerizing performance to the powerful soundtrack of the 2022 film “The Whale.”
They finished 1.43 points ahead of the three-time world champions.
Gilles and Poirier took bronze with their Vincent van Gogh tribute to the music of “Starry, Starry Night”, which received huge acclaim and relegated Italian pair Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri to fourth place.
Fournier Beaudry, a Canadian who received French citizenship last November, was available following the suspension of her former partner Nikolaj Sorensen, who was implicated in a sexual abuse case in Canada in 2012, which he has denied. Sorensen was in the audience in Milan.
Heading into the Games, the French pair endured a tumultuous season.
Three weeks before the Games they became embroiled in controversy when Papadakis published a book that caused quite a stir.
In it, she harshly criticized her former partner, claiming she was under his “control” during their time skating together.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
