MILAN — Guillaume Cizeron won gold in ice dance at the Winter Olympics on Wednesday night, a month after NBC dropped his former skating partner, Gabriella Papadakis, from her role as a network figure skating analyst due to allegations of abuse she made against Cizeron.
The French ice dancer, along with new partner Laurence Fournier Beaudry, defeated three-time world champions Madison Chock and Evan Bates of the U.S., who settled for silver. Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier of Canada took bronze.
The live NBC broadcast of the ice dance event made no mention of Cizeron’s former relationship with Papadakis; together they won the Olympic gold at the 2022 Beijing Games. NBC dropped Papadakis as an ice dance analyst, citing a “conflict of interest” when she published a memoir in January in which she alleged Cizeron was “controlling, demanding, and critical.”
Cizeron told French media at the time of the book’s release that Papadakis was creating a “smear campaign” against him .
Cizeron and Fournier Beaudry’s partnership, formed less than a year ago, has been clouded with controversy from the start and formed a major plot line in the Netflix-distributed documentary, Glitter and Gold: Ice Dance, released this month. Fournier Beaudry’s previous partner and current boyfriend, Nikolaj Sorenson, was suspended from figure skating for alleged sexual assault in a case that remains in arbitration.
In the documentary, Fournier Beaudry defended Sorenson, saying: “I know my boyfriend 100%. I know him. And we stand strong together.”
Asked on Thursday about the off-ice “noise” surrounding the French skaters, Cizeron said he and Fournier Beaudry “tried to create a bubble where we really supported each other through everything. We’ve been through some incredibly hard moments.”
On the ice, Cizeron and Fournier Beaudry’s victory after only a few months competing was unusual in ice dance, a sport which typically rewards pairs who train together for years. The U.S. and Canadian medalists have been teammates for over a decade.
Cizeron said the gold medal proves anything is possible in ice dance. “We get to choose what we do, and who we do it with, and who we want to be,” he said.