French tandem cements place among greatest ice dance duos with Olympic gold medal

Opinion

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This article was published 13/02/2022 (1045 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BEIJING The Last Tango was the perfection coda to a career.

It was the reason Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron stayed for another four years, if rarely seen over the Olympic cycle — this medal, this gold.

Seamless, ethereal, with twizzles from another realm, their quiet strokes on the ice a susurrant whisper.

The French tandem, four times world champions, can now take their place in the firmament of ice dance luminaries with Virtue and Moir, Torvill and Dean, Bestemianova and Bukin.

A world record in combined score for their performance on Monday — and this is a duo that has broken the world record 30 times in their discipline.

But they were eclipsed, infinitesimally, by Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir in Pyeongchang, where the Canadian stars claimed a second Olympic championship.

“I think we don’t believe it yet,’’ Papadakis gasped afterwards. “We have been waiting for this. This is the medal that we wanted. My brain doesn’t understand it.’’

Last to take the ice, first to elicit a standing ovation from the sparse and restricted crowd at the Capital Indoor Stadium, a venue that has alternated between short-track speedskating and figure skating, the former a mosh pit of mayhem, the latter a serene stage for elegance and grace.

Papadakis and Cizeron were seduction on ice, earning a score of 136.15 for their exquisite free dance to “Elegie’’ by French composer Gabriel Faure, a tango motif by any other name encompassing beauty, grief, fear and anger, segueing from one emotion to the next. Blended with their field-leading earlier short program — world record — the tally of 226.98 points surpassed their own previous world record of 226.61, set in 2019. It easily held off a passionate interpretation of Sergei Rachmaninoff by Russians Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov, reigning world champions, for gold.

But Papadakis and Cizeron didn’t contest the last worlds. What need do they have for a fifth global title?

Americans Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue claimed bronze, with compatriots Madison Chock and Evan Bates right behind them. That means gold, bronze and fourth place were all incubated in the Montreal skating academy of former Canadian champions Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon, the remarkable husband-wife coaching couple that brought 11 teams to Beijing, from among the 29 in the competition.

For France, it was a second gold medal in ice dance, the first delivered by Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat in 2002, which inspired these successors, who’ve been skating together for 18 years.

“Marina and Gwendal are a couple we watched when we were children and they gave us lots of good dreams,’’ said Cizeron. “I hope that the young skaters that were watching us today will be able to say the same when they grow up, or in four years or 20 years’ time.’’

Papadakis, daughter of a skating coach mother and food truck father — in Austin, Texas! — added: “I remember watching Marina and Gwendal on TV. I have remembered this wonderful Olympic moment for France until today. I am so happy to win this title now for France.’’

Canada, which has turned into an ice dance powerhouse, sent three teams to the Winter Games, led by reigning world bronze medallists Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, who’d spent an exceedingly long time under the long shadow cast by Virtue and Moir. Theirs is a completely different style of energetic abandon — not always rewarded by judges — but also technical expertise.

In their free dance, a narrative summarizing 11 years together performed to “Long and Winding Road,’’ Gilles and Poirier experienced a significant wobble in a rotational lift that only got halfway up. But such was their ability to correct on the spot — and cover up, somewhat — that they still received a Level 4 score for the flashy flip manoeuvre.

“The flip just went a little bit too far, so where I landed I was on my heel and I need to be on the ball of my foot, closer to my toes,’’ explained Gilles, who was visibly upset when she came off the ice, heading for the kiss ‘n’ cry.

To translate: Her skate should have been elsewhere on Poirier’s leg, so they could boost her up together. She didn’t have sufficient momentum to push upwards.

“If I’m on my heel, I don’t have enough pressure to push off the blade, it wants to slip. So at that point we just kind of tried to hold on to it.’’

In ice dancing’s opaque rules and Byzantine scoring formular, the first part of that lift didn’t actually count for points, so the couple wasn’t assessed any demerits in the Grade of Execution. Credit to Poirier for the strength required to keep Gilles aloft.

“Usually I’m right up over the shoulder so it’s a lot easier for me to flip over,’’ said Gilles. “I was luckily in a decent enough position I could try to push up a little bit and he was strong enough to help me in that. It took a lot of energy and a lot of fight but we did it and that’s important.’’

She could easily have got splat, which is most embarrassing in ice dance and was the fate of the Poles on Monday.

“The fact we were able to hold onto the lift and get into the second half (of the program) despite being in a really awkward position — that’s actually really impressive to me,’’ observed Poirier. “I’m still kind of amazed that we were able to do that.’’

They ended with a free dance score of 121.26 for a combined 204.78.

The duo, who train in Toronto, were considered Canada’s best chance for a figure skating medal in Beijing, with the sport in transition after a gaudy medal haul by the since-retired Pyeongchang squad. But they were sixth after the rhythm dance and this isn’t a skating discipline that sees dramatic movement up-down the placements.

In fact, they finished seventh. Compatriots Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Nikolaj Soerensen were ninth, Marjorie Lajoie and Zachary Lagha, 2019 world junior champions, placed 13th.

Gilles and Poirier, who will be going to worlds next, are both 30 years old, so they’re unlikely to have a third Olympics in their future, though neither would publicly commit to looming retirement. It’s a thought they purposely kept at bay during this competition.

“We didn’t want to go into this event thinking this is the last one we’re going to do,’’ said Gilles. “That puts a lot of unnecessary pressure on yourself. I feel like our story has always been an open-ended story and it really depends on what we want to do next. Do we feel creative enough to keep going?’’

Rosie DiManno is a Toronto-based columnist covering sports and current affairs for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @rdimanno