The scheduling was surely not a coincidence as the ice dancing pairs served up some much-needed Valentine’s Day cheer at the Capital Indoor Stadium in Beijing, on a day figure skating was overshadowed by the Kamila Valieva case.
The gold medal, won with a world record score of 226.98, went to France’s Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron, who danced to Gabriel Fauré’s Élégie. That also added a redemptive twist to the competition. In 2018, they became breakout social media stars of the Pyeongchang Games in South Korea for all the wrong reasons.
At the last Olympics a wardrobe malfunction left Papadakis falling out of her dress on the ice while the skaters tried to execute their short dance. “I felt it right away and I prayed,” she said at the time. “It was pretty distracting, kind of my worst nightmare happening at the Olympics.”
After that mishap the French dancers missed out on winning, despite setting a world record n their other routine, and had to settle for silver, losing by less than a point to the Canadian duo of Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir. Papadakis and Cizeron have gone on to dominate ice dancing, and they went into Monday’s session with a commanding lead.
The British pair Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson finished in 10th place with a combined score of 191.64.
Ice dancing is surely the most sensual of Olympic disciplines, with many of the pairings through the years being couples on and off the ice. Though not every dancing pair in Beijing are romantically entangled. Indeed, from the winning pair, Cizeron is gay and in October 2021 the International Skating Union had to investigate an allegation of homophobic comments made about him by a Russian coach at a tournament. This year the Czech Republic have sent Natalie Taschlerova and Filip Taschler to the Winter Games – siblings who consequently dance in a slightly different style to the close entwinements often seen on the ice.
Japan’s husband and wife duo of Tim Koleto and Misato Komatsubara missed out on a Valentine’s Day Olympic ice dance as they finished 22nd in Saturday’s rhythm dance session, meaning they did not qualify for Monday’s medal stage.
Maybe being in a relationship is not an advantage anyway. Evan Bates and Madison Chock of the US danced for years before becoming a couple off the ice and despite an intimate routine early they finished outside the medals in a frustrating fourth place. They had performed an avant garde intergalactic space love story set to the electronic tones of Daft Punk.
Above them in third were their US teammates Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue, who used to be an a relationship, but ended it two-and-a-half years ago, while continuing to compete together. They had picked perhaps a more conventional love theme with Anne Sila’s 2016 piano-driven ballad Drowning as their soundtrack.
The bronze medallists kissed the ice as they left an Olympic competition for the last time. “It was just a moment for both of us to say goodbye to Olympic ice,” Hubbell said, “and thank this journey that’s created the people that we are today.” They are both retiring and intend to go into coaching – separately.
The silver medal went to Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov of the Russian Olympic Committee. But if there was a prize for the most appropriate music choice for the day, it would surely have gone to Ukraine’s Oleksandra Nazarova and Maksym Nikitin as they danced to the song Backstage Romance from the soundtrack to Moulin Rouge.
Every Winter Olympic Games since Innsbruck in 1976 has fallen in such a way that it includes 14 February. But maybe nothing will be more tailored to Valentine’s Day than the special trousers that Norway’s curlers wore for the occasion in Pyeongchang four years ago.
