The gap that last separated these adopted Montrealers from an Olympic gold medal was the thickness of a piece of cloth. Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron intend, this time, to show all that the sport and the art of ice dancing can be today.
If they are honest, most Canadians will recognize that as cruel as it is, the misadventure of the French couple at the last Games in Pyeongchang was not to displease them. Counting Canadians Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir among their main adversaries, Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron had to compose from the start of their short program with a collar that no longer held the top of a dress. The next day, the young French people, now aged 26 and 27, had the best score in the free program, but had finished, in total for the two results, just 0.79 points behind the Canadians and the medal. Golden.
This wound is not completely healed yet. “It depends on the days,” said Guillaume two weeks before the start of the Beijing Games. We had four years to digest and we now use it in a positive way as much as we can. Above all, we try to focus on the future. »
“We were very disappointed, confirms Gabriella. Knowing that we were so close to gold and that we remained dominant after the Games makes this medal even more desirable. Especially since it’s the only one we miss. »
Quadruple world champion, the couple has hardly been able to compete since the start of the pandemic. Based in Montreal since 2014 to take advantage of the international center of excellence in figure skating set up by former skaters Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon, the duo notably paid the price for health rules. “As I am not a Canadian citizen, if I left the country, I risked not being able to return,” explains Gabriella in her accent that straddles France and Quebec.
The two French, however, do not regret anything, she said. “We immediately felt adopted in Montreal. We work there with a remarkable group of athletes. It really has become our home. »
From “waacking” to Fauré
The health constraints will at least have had the advantage of allowing them to fine-tune their choreographies for the Games. The imposed theme this year for the short program is urban dance. They chose to draw inspiration from waackinga dance that emerged in the 1970s in the gay community of Los Angeles and sought the help of Montreal urban dancer and choreographer Axelle Munezero.
For the free program, they will dance to an excerpt fromElegy by the French composer Gabriel Fauré. “Last year, we had planned a tango program that we couldn’t do in competition and whose passion and character we really liked, but we also wanted to add our lyrical and dramatic strengths to it,” says Guillaume. Cizeron. Fauré’s piece presents so many colors that it allows us to get, with a single piece, all of this: the passion, the romanticism, the more contemporary side. »
Ice dancing partners since they were eight or nine years old, Papadakis and Cizeron now understand each other without speaking. “It takes time to find the chemistry between two bodies. And to know each other very well, it helps to face the pressure in competition”, observes Gabriella.
Finish with Prince Charming
Guillaume has chosen to openly display his homosexuality and does not hesitate to explain and defend the LGBTQ cause. This does not only earn him obliging comments, the International Skating Federation having even been forced to open an investigation, this fall, on one of its Russian judges who had declared in particular that with his sexual orientation, the Frenchman could not embody love with his partner.
“When you practice a sport on a global level, you come into contact with different cultures. And the degree of progress on these questions is not the same in all countries, unfortunately”, observes Guillaume Cizeron, not without pointing out in passing that we generally know how to appreciate figure skating in Russia and that the couple of French has many admirers there.
“We tried to bring a wind of modernity to our sport and to ice dancing, which suffered from this somewhat old-fashioned conception of the heteronormative couple which affected the state of mind and the creativity of the athletes, he continues. We are a modern couple in the sense that we break away from that cliché. Part of the legacy that we would like to leave behind is for skaters to be able to express their personality and their creativity beyond this very own image of a prince charming with his princess, which is interesting for two minutes , but quickly becomes a bit heavy. »
The two athletes who will take the stage on Saturday evening in Beijing (Saturday morning in Quebec) have the feeling of practicing a sport like no other, and are grateful to him. “What we like is this marriage between a very artistic side — we do a lot of research with choreographers, theater teachers… — and the fact that it’s also completely a sport, explains Gabriella Papadakis, who promises that her dress won’t play tricks on her this time. It is not a sport, rather it is an art. It’s not the opposite either. It’s really both at the same time. »