Ice Dancing, Mixed

When Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir retired from competition after the 2018 Games, it was widely predicted that the French pairing of Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron would assume their mantle as the leading partnership in the world. They dominated the 2018-19 season but, at the 2020 European Championships, they suffered a surprise loss to the Russian pair of Viktoriya Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov.

With the French pair sidelined for the entirety of the winter of 2020-21 by a mixture of injury, illness and cancellations provoked by the pandemic, Sinitsina and Katsalapov went on an unbeaten run that encompassed wins at the 2021 World Championships and 2022 European Championships. The two pairs were not to meet again until the Beijing Winter Olympics.

Some people blamed Papadakis and Cizeron missing out on the gold medal in 2018 on a wardrobe malfunction in the rhythm program that left Papadakis’ breast exposed for the majority of the performance, but this time everything stayed in place and they wowed the judges and posted a world best score for the segment. In the free program the American duo of Madison Hubbell and Zach Donohue kept their grasp on the bronze medal over teammates Madison Chock and Evan Bates despite a deduction for exceeding the time limit for a hold.

Although the Russians performed well, Papadakis and Cizeron were marginally better and extended their winning margin when skating to French composer Gabriel Faure’s “Requiem”. They emulated Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat’s victory for France in the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City.