How France Skated Through Scandal to Edge Out Team USA for Ice Dance Gold

At their fourth Olympics, Madison Chock and Evan Bates finally have an Olympic medal in ice dance.

It’s not the gold the U.S. duo was hoping for, but a silver, 1.43 points behind gold medalists Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron of France. Canada’s Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier earned bronze, also their first Olympic medal in their third Games together.

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The podium was full of surprises, as Great Britain’s Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson, current world bronze medalists who were expected to be in the mix, finished in seventh after Fear faltered when performing the synchronized twizzles, or pirouettes on the ice, and received a lower level for her sequence than Gibson. 

Gilles and Poirier were mesmerizing in a program themed after Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night and Sunflowers paintings. Gilles, a cancer survivor, trained for Milan while undergoing treatment for early stage ovarian cancer, and she dedicated her journey to her mother, who supported her skating career and passed away from glioblastoma in 2018. Always the bridesmaid at the Olympics, the couple finally have their Olympic medal.

While there was certainly drama on the ice with the closeness of the results, there was an equally intense story building off the ice around the French team, whom U.S. figure skater and commentator Adam Rippon described as having “sinister energy” in the Netflix documentary Glitter and Gold that presciently chronicled the journey of the three teams. 

Just before the Olympics, Cizeron’s former partner, Gabriella Papadakis, with whom he won gold at the 2022 Olympics, released her memoir, So As Not to Disappear, detailing what she describes as domineering and controlling behavior by Cizeron, to the point that she was terrified of being alone with him. Cizeron denied the reports, calling them a “smear campaign” and saying that the book “contains false information, attributing to me, among other things, statements I have never made which I consider serious.” 

Papadakis was scheduled to join NBC as a skating analyst in Milan but was removed from the job following the release of the book. “Her new book creates a clear conflict of interest,” an NBC spokesperson said in a statement. “Our responsibility is to deliver coverage that our audience can trust to be free of bias—whether actual or perceived—and we regret that is no longer possible given the circumstances.”

Papadakis retired from competitive skating in 2024—and left her training facility, the Ice Academy of Montreal—in part, she says, because of the uncomfortable environment at the school. Contributing to that was Fournier Beaudry’s former partner, and still boyfriend, Nikolaj Sorensen; the couple competed for Canada and also trained at the Montreal facility. 

Sorensen was suspended from the sport in 2024 by Skate Canada after Canada’s Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner investigated him for alleged sexual assault involving a U.S. coach and former figure skater. Sorensen denied the allegation and appealed the suspension, which was overturned on jurisdictional grounds in 2025, though an arbitration board has decided the legal decision should be further reviewed. Fournier Beaudry had already begun her new partnership with Cizeron, representing France, after receiving French citizenship several months ago.

Still, Fournier Beaudry has remained by Sorensen’s side, and in the documentary she said the ban ended both their careers. “I know my boyfriend 100 percent. I know him. And we [stood] strong together,” she said. Asked in Milan about her support of her boyfriend, Fournier Beaudry declined to respond, saying only that she had said everything she wanted to say on the topic.

French journalists reported that Sorensen was spotted in the Milano Ice Skating Arena to watch Fournier Beaudry, adding to the tension between the French and Americans.

When asked after the competition about the controversies surrounding their ex-partners, Cizeron said, “From the beginning we tried to create a bubble where we really supported each other through everything. We’ve been through some incredibly hard moments. But the love we have for each other and for the sport brought us through. It helped us refocus on enjoying those moments together, because they don’t last forever and we didn’t want that taken away from us.”

Chock couldn’t hold back the tears as she admitted winning silver was a “bittersweet feeling. At the moment, we have so much to be proud of, we’ve had the most incredible career, 15 years on the ice together, the first Olympics as a married couple, and we delivered four of the best performances this week,” she said, referring to the short and free programs she and Bates skated in the ice dance event as well as the short and free programs they skated in the team event, where they and their teammates won gold. But it was the gold in ice dance that has been the North Star of their career, and she couldn’t contain her emotions realizing that that gold remained elusive. She choked up as she talked about the support they have received throughout their career from family and friends. “We are really proud … and grateful to our coaches and our families. They came all this way and have supported us through it all,” she said. “It means so much to us to be a part of this sport, and to have contributed years of work and creativity to hopefully inspire the next generation of skaters.”

The fight for gold and silver actually began before the Opening Ceremony in Milan, in the first round of that team event. In the rhythm dance, Chock and Bates outscored the French team by 1.08 points. In that competition, the judges gave Chock and Bates the highest level, 4, in all of their technical elements, while Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron received a level 3 for one of theirs, which earned them fewer points.

Once the individual skating events began, the circumstances reversed, and in the rhythm dance portion on Feb. 9, Chock and Bates received a level 3 for their pattern step sequence, while the judges awarded Fournier Beaudy and Cizeron a level 4 for that element.

And to make things even more complicated, the two teams train together at the Ice Academy of Montreal, sharing coaches Marie-France Dubreuil, Patrice Lauzon, and Romain Hagenauer. After the team event, Hagenauer said he and Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron worked to clean up the sequence that resulted in the lower level, which paid off when they competed it again in the individual event. The French finished 0.46 points ahead of the Americans after that first portion of the competition; a difference Chock and Bates thought they could easily make up in the free program.

In that segment, however, the scoring was also close. Chock and Bates skated first, ticking off their elements with the same precision they had in the team event, taking full advantage of the drama embedded in their matador-inspired routine. “We felt like we skated a winning performance,” said Bates.

Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron then took to the ice their more lyrical and abstract program set to the soundtrack from The Whale, with choreography meant to mimic the ebb and flow and constant movement of water. They outscored Chock and Bates in both technical elements, which focus on specific skating skills, as well as components, which reflect how the couple composed their program, presented it, and executed the elements.

In ice dance, which doesn’t have the eye-catching jumps or spins that singles skating does, it’s all about the precision of the skaters’ edges and the complexity of how their blades move across the ice, especially during step sequences, where they must follow specific criteria about which edges they need to achieve and how long they need to hold them.

Chock seemed in shock by the reality of not winning the gold; when the silver medals were placed around their necks, neither she nor Bates looked at them, and Chock stared stoically ahead throughout the ceremony. Neither commented on what their future holds, but being in their 30s, it’s reasonable to think they saw this as their last Olympics and were hoping to end on a more positive note.

“I feel like in life sometimes,” Bates reflected, “you do everything right and it doesn’t go your way, and that’s life, that’s sport—it’s a subjective sport, it’s a judged sport. But one factor that is indisputable is we delivered our best. We skated our best. And the rest is not up to us.”

Whether Chock and Bates decide to keep competing, the next generation of U.S. ice dancers is already showing promise. Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko finished 11th at their first Games. And U.S. silver medalists Emelia Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik finished fifth in their first Olympics, skating impressive programs that seemed to catch the attention of the judges. “If you told me one year ago today I’d be top five at the Olympics, I would have said it’s a lie,” said Zingas. “It was the most emotion that I’ve given on the ice so far this season, and it just felt magical.”