Here's Why Everyone Is Upset That France's Figure Skating Duo Won Gold Over Team USA In Ice Dance At The Olympics
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If you haven't been watching the Winter Olympics this year, you've been missing out. There person been a batch of spectacular moments, from American fig skater Ilia Malinin's on-ice backflip to Norwegian cross-country skiier Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo's uphill sprint connected skis, which is possibly the astir awesome happening I've ever seen.
But the Olympics ne'er hap without a ungraded oregon two. This week, everyone's talking astir the French fig skating duo who conscionable won gold successful crystal dancing. Their names are Guillaume Cizeron and Laurence Fournier Beaudry, and they lone began skating arsenic a duo successful 2025.
The crushed for their caller concern is simply a spot eyebrow-raising to many. Cizeron previously competed with his longtime partner, Gabriella Papadakis, astatine the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, wherever the brace won gold. The brace split aft Beijing, and 3 weeks earlier the 2026 Olympic Games, Papadakis released a memoir, So arsenic Not to Disappear, successful which she claims that Cizeron was "controlling" and "demanding" during their partnership, and that she was "terrified" of being unsocial with him.
The accuser, for her part, said successful a connection to the Canadian Press up of the Olympics, "The comments by the French squad successful the property and connected a Netflix documentary make a unsafe situation for skaters who request to study abuse. The comments of the reigning Olympic champion and a squad successful contention for the upcoming Olympic rubric transportation weight, and utilizing their voices to publically undermine a survivor's truths further enforces the civilization of soundlessness successful fig skating."
Enter Madison Chock and Evan Bates, Team USA's crystal dancing duo. The pair, who are joined and person been skating unneurotic for 15 years, won the escaped skate metallic medal this year, falling abbreviated of golden with a 0.97 margin.
Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron won with a higher method people of 77.06, whereas Chock and Bates scored 76.75. But Lukas Weese, a newsman from The Athletic reporting unrecorded from Milan, disagreed with the judges' determination to springiness the French squad the gold, contempt the higher method score. Following the results, he wrote successful a portion pursuing the event that "I felt that the emotion and show prime of Chock/Bates was higher, aided with a amended opus choice... The assemblage agreed. The judges didn’t spot it that way, and that’s wherefore France is the Olympic champion by the slimmest of margins.”
Reporter Lukas Weese isn't the lone 1 who seems to athletics the sentiment that the judges erred successful not giving Team USA the gold. Fellow USA skater Amber Glenn took to her Instagram communicative to station a graphic of Chock and Bates with the caption, "My Olympic champions / Gracious radical / Incredible athletes / Amazing entertainers."
Geoffrey Brissaud, different French crystal dancer, posted this connected his Instagram story:
...and plentifulness of celebs were commenting their support:
The fashionable sentiment seems to beryllium that Chock and Bates were perfectly robbed, with galore believing that Chock and Bates deserved gold. People online had immoderate beauteous aggravated reactions. Here's what immoderate had to say:
Some fans online were truthful upset by the results that they person since started an online petition asking the IOC and ISU to analyse the judging. We'll spot if that happens, but arsenic it stands close now, Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron are the 2026 Ice Dance golden medalists.
What bash you think? Were Chock and Bates robbed? Let america cognize successful the comments.