If you haven’t been watching the Winter Olympics this year, you’ve been missing out. There have been a lot of spectacular moments, from American figure skater Ilia Malinin’s on-ice backflip to Norwegian cross-country skiier Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo’s uphill sprint on skis, which is maybe the most impressive thing I’ve ever seen.
But the Olympics never happen without a scandal or two. This week, everyone’s talking about the French figure skating duo who just won gold in ice dancing. Their names are Guillaume Cizeron and Laurence Fournier Beaudry, and they only began skating as a duo in 2025.
The reason for their recent partnership is a bit eyebrow-raising to many. Cizeron previously competed with his longtime partner, Gabriella Papadakis, at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, where the pair won gold. The pair split after Beijing, and three weeks before the 2026 Olympic Games, Papadakis released a memoir, So as Not to Disappear, in which she claims that Cizeron was “controlling” and “demanding” during their partnership, and that she was “terrified” of being alone with him.
The accuser, for her part, said in a statement to the Canadian Press ahead of the Olympics, “The comments by the French team in the press and on a Netflix documentary create a dangerous environment for skaters who need to report abuse. The comments of the reigning Olympic champion and a team in contention for the upcoming Olympic title carry weight, and using their voices to publicly undermine a survivor’s truths further enforces the culture of silence in figure skating.”
Enter Madison Chock and Evan Bates, Team USA’s ice dancing duo. The pair, who are married and have been skating together for 15 years, won the free skate silver medal this year, falling short of gold with a 0.97 margin.
Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron won with a higher technical score of 77.06, whereas Chock and Bates scored 76.75. But Lukas Weese, a reporter from The Athletic reporting live from Milan, disagreed with the judges’ decision to give the French team the gold, despite the higher technical score. Following the results, he wrote in a piece following the event that “I felt that the emotion and performance quality of Chock/Bates was higher, aided with a better song choice… The crowd agreed. The judges didn’t see it that way, and that’s why France is the Olympic champion by the slimmest of margins.”
Reporter Lukas Weese isn’t the only one who seems to sport the opinion that the judges erred in not giving Team USA the gold. Fellow USA skater Amber Glenn took to her Instagram story to post a graphic of Chock and Bates with the caption, “My Olympic champions / Gracious people / Incredible athletes / Amazing entertainers.”
Geoffrey Brissaud, another French ice dancer, posted this on his Instagram story:
…and plenty of celebs were commenting their support:
The popular opinion seems to be that Chock and Bates were absolutely robbed, with many believing that Chock and Bates deserved gold. People online had some pretty intense reactions. Here’s what some had to say:
Some fans online were so upset by the results that they have since started an online petition asking the IOC and ISU to investigate the judging. We’ll see if that happens, but as it stands right now, Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron are the 2026 Ice Dance gold medalists.
What do you think? Were Chock and Bates robbed? Let us know in the comments.
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