Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron won the Olympic title they were missing this morning. After finishing first in the short program by breaking the world record, the French were aiming for gold in the ice dance free program, it’s done, four years after a narrowly missed title in Pyeongchang. This is the only title that was still missing from the immense prize list of the French duo, in silver four years ago in Pyeongchang.
On the Chinese ice, they largely imposed themselves, with a total of 226.98 points, new world record, ahead of Russians Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov (220.51) and Americans Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue (218.02). The French duo, already four-time world champion (2015, 2016, 2018 and 2019) and five-time European champion (2015-2019), finally won Olympic gold thanks to their skated free program to the sound of Gabriel’s Elegie Fauré, played on cello and piano.
At the top of the French skating pantheon
This Olympic coronation places Papadakis and Cizeron at the very top of the pantheon of French skating. Only Andrée and Pierre Brunet, double Olympic champions in 1928 and 1932 in pairs, and quadruple world champions between 1926 and 1932, almost a century ago, can still compete. French ice had not known Olympic gold for twenty years and the title of Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat in 2002 in Salt Lake City (United States), already in ice dancing.