When Olympic ice dance pair Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillame Cizeron take to the ice on Wednesday, they’ll accomplish that because the favorites for gold.
The French duo at the moment leads the pack with a rating of 90.18, a slim margin over the Individuals Madison Chock and Evan Bates, and roughly 4 factors forward of Canadians Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier. And Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron’s free dance, the concluding, longer skate of the multi-day competitors, is taken into account one of many sport’s greatest this season.
A victory can be a triumph for the comparatively new pair, as ice dancing is commonly characterised as a sport the place years-long partnerships are likely to rule the rostrum. However all of Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron’s success additionally comes with a disclaimer, one which entails allegations of rape and accusations of emotional abuse and the silencing of a sufferer — a darkish reflection of a number of the worst issues about this attractive sport.
Why it’s troublesome to root for France’s ice dance crew
It’s laborious to speak about Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillame Cizeron’s accomplishments on the ice with out addressing the intense allegations — rape and emotional abuse — they’re at the moment embroiled in.
Previous to skating with Cizeron, Fournier Beaudry skated underneath the Canadian flag with a person named Nikolaj Sørensen. Fournier Beaudry and Sørensen additionally occur to be courting. The pair competed on the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing and positioned ninth.
In July 2023, a former American determine skater filed a report with Canada’s now-defunct Workplace of the Sport Integrity Commissioner, alleging that, after a celebration in April of 2012, Sørensen held her down in opposition to her will and raped her.
“I pushed my arms in opposition to his hips to attempt to get his penis out of me and I used to be struggling to breathe. At this level, I feared for my life and let my physique go limp as I lay there and he raped me,” the alleged sufferer mentioned within the report she filed, which was obtained by USA In the present day. The outlet additionally wrote that “the girl mentioned she remained silent for years and by no means reached out to the police or sports activities officers as a result of she feared that she can be blamed and that nobody would consider her.”
After an investigation, OSIC banned Sørensen in October 2024 for six years. The ban was later overturned on jurisdictional grounds and is at the moment underneath enchantment; Sørensen has maintained his innocence the entire time. Fournier Beaudry has defended her boyfriend, most lately within the new Netflix ice dance docuseries Glitter and Gold, the place she’s featured.
”I do know my boyfriend one hundred pc. I do know him and we stand robust collectively,” Fournier Beaudry mentioned within the doc. She additionally mentioned, “after they determined to droop him it meant his profession was over. Which additionally meant that my profession was over.”
Fournier Beaudry’s profession wasn’t over. On March 2, 2025, she and Guillame Cizeron introduced in a joint Instagram publish that they had been teaming up and would signify France. The 2 mentioned they had been conversant in one another as a result of they each prepare on the Ice Academy of Montreal, an ice dance teaching establishment.
Cizeron was out there as a result of his earlier associate Gabriela Papadakis, who he’d received two Olympic medals and damaged world data with, had lately retired.
Earlier this yr, on January 15, 2026, Papadakis revealed Pour ne pas disparaître (In order To not Disappear), a memoir through which she discusses the stress and mistreatment she skilled as a high feminine ice dancer. There isn’t a English translation of the e-book but, however based on French retailers just like the AFP and Le Monde, Papadakis writes that Cizeron was a demanding, exhausting associate. She advised the AFP: “I’ll have been underneath a form of management and experiencing issues that weren’t acceptable, however in actual fact, that relationship displays the system [of ice dance]. … Little by little, I noticed I used to be in a harmful state of affairs for my bodily and psychological well being.”
Cizeron has denied Papadakis’s account of their time collectively, described her account as “a smear marketing campaign,” and threatened his ex-partner with authorized motion. Papadakis was presupposed to function a commentator for NBC on the Olympics this yr, however was let go. In a press release, NBC mentioned, “We respect Gabriella’s proper to inform the story of her life and profession. On the similar time, her new e-book creates a transparent battle of curiosity.”
In response, Papadakis has posted on her private social media account: “It’s nevertheless extremely troublesome to make sport safer when survivors’ voices are nonetheless being silenced. I needed to finish my aggressive profession as a result of I may now not tolerate abuse. And now, because of talking up about it I’ve misplaced my job.I don’t single myself out as a sufferer.”
Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron’s ice dance partnership is the newest chapter in determine skating’s controversy-plagued historical past
Cizeron, Sørensen, and Fournier Beaudry by extension are usually not the primary skaters tethered to allegations of abuse and misconduct. They most likely received’t be the final. As stunning as this sport might be, it’s additionally able to true ugliness behind the scenes.
There are a number of current accounts from former athletes alleging that the game is a catalyst for poisonous conduct and has taken a toll on their psychological well being.
Yulia Lipnitskaya, a Russian Olympic champion in 2014, has spoken about how anorexia compelled her to retire from skating. Gracie Gold, an American Olympic medalist additionally in 2014, wrote a memoir, Outofshapeworthlessloser, that detailed the game’s debilitating impact on her psychological well being and her personal consuming problems. In that e-book, Gold additionally writes in regards to the trauma of being sexually assaulted by a fellow skater.
There are additionally a number of tales and accompanying lawsuits through which skaters allege that federations and coaches didn’t shield them from their abusers.
It’s as if successful is extra vital than the human toll this sport takes.
The extraordinary concentrate on success might clarify how Fournier Beaudry’s French citizenship was granted simply in time for the Olympics, and why the French and skating media has, based on critics, averted asking the pair laborious questions in regards to the very bleak circumstances that set their partnership into movement. Fournier Beaudry and Sørensen would ostensibly nonetheless be skating for Canada if there have been no rape accusations in opposition to him and if the OSIC investigation cleared him. And if Papadakis didn’t consider she was in an unhealthy partnership with Cizeron, they may nonetheless be skating collectively too.
On Friday, Christine Brennan, a USA In the present day reporter who broke the story in regards to the rape accusation in opposition to Sørensen, requested Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron about Fournier Beaudry’s feedback within the Netflix collection (i.e., that she believes Sørensen “one hundred pc”) and if the duo has thought-about the chilling impact this might have on different victims and the general security of determine skating.
“What’s the message you’re sending to sexual assault survivors and abuse survivors in your sport once you defend Nikolaj Sørensen?” Brennan requested.
“We mentioned the whole lot we would have liked to say about that topic, and we’re targeted on the Olympics,” Fournier Beaudry mentioned in response. Brennan pressed her once more, saying, “What about the truth that the survivor has mentioned that as we speak?”
“We now have no ideas,” the skater mentioned.
The skating world ought to have many.
Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron will skate for the Olympic gold medal on Wednesday, February 10.
