Inside ice dancing's complicated world: angry dog instagram posts, sexual assault case and soring probes

Lewis Gibson, from Prestwick, alongside his partner Lilah Fear smashed a record previously held by Torvill and Dean and the Kerr siblings by taking his eighth title at the British Championships - and will be vying for a place on the medal podium in Milan-Cortina next year.

There is no doubt the pair are in contention for a medal at the Winter Olympics - but how likely are we to see them on the podium?

In short, it has been a complicated and highly charged season for ice dance so far.

With the top handful of teams well established during the Olympic cycle, it should really have been a case of jostling for the medal positions as the competitions progressed. Gibson and Fear became the first UK team to win a world championships medal since Torvill and Dean last year, scooping bronze in Boston.

Meanwhile, the Grand Prix season has just concluded in Japan, with Gibson and Fear winning a bronze medal in the final, leaving them well-placed for Olympics success. They will compete on home ice at the European Figure Skating Championships in Sheffield in January - the first time a competition of that level has been held in the UK in more than a decade.

The Winter Olympics comes next, in February, followed by the World Figure Skating Championships in March.

However, in a drama-hit season rivalling that of 1994, when Nancy Kerrigan was smashed in the knee with a hammer by an assailant hired by the estranged husband of her rival Tonya Harding, a new team has appeared on the horizon which is shaking up the standings and filling the skating gossip columns.

Surprise comeback

French skater Guillaume Cizeron is an Olympic gold medallist with his former partner and compatriot, Gabriella Papadakis. The pair, who skated together since childhood when they were matched by Papadakis’ mother (also a coach), were unbeatable, winning two Olympic medals and five world championship titles.

In 2022, ten months after winning gold at the Beijing Winter Olympics, they announced they were going to take a break from competition. However, they formally ended their partnership two years later.

Around the same time as the French couple’s formal split, Canadian ice dancer Laurence Fournier Beaudry found herself in an unimaginable situation. Her Danish-born ice dance partner - and long term romantic partner - Nikolaj Sorensen was accused of sexual assault against an unnamed American skater at a party some years earlier. The pair, who were ranked in the top ten in the world, withdrew from planned competitions amid the allegations, which he denied.

Sorensen was subsequently handed a six-year suspension from the sport by Skate Canada and the Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner (OSIC) for "sexual maltreatment". But the suspension was overturned in June this year by the Sport Dispute Resolution Centre of Canada on jurisdictional grounds, as he was not a Canadian citizen or competing for Canada at the time of the alleged incident. The case has not been tried in court.

Both Fournier Beaudry, Soresen, Cizeron and Papadakis trained at the same ice dance school: the Ice Academy of Montreal (IAM), in Canada. Many of the top ice dance teams in the world, including Gibson and Fear, are also based there under the tutelage of Romain Hagueneur and Marie France Dubreuil, alongside Madison Chock and Evan Bates, a husband and wife team who are three-time world champions and scooped gold in the recent Grand Prix final.

A year ago, rumours began to circulate in the ice dance world that Papadakis and Cizeron’s long-held friendship was over, as well as their skating partnership. They stopped following each other on Instagram, with Papadakis allegedly outraged that Cizeron was still on friendly terms with the disgraced Sorensen.

Soon afterwards, Cizeron and Fournier Beaudry announced with much fanfare that they planned to skate together - with an eye on competing at the 2026 Winter Olympic Games.

Meanwhile, Papadakis - who has since been working to raise the profile of the potential for same-sex skating pairs through professional appearances with fellow former champion-turned-IAM coach Madison Hubbell - has written a memoir. The book, To Not Disappear, is to be published initially in French on 15 January - the day Cizeron and Fournier Beaudry are set to take to the ice for the European Figure Skating Championships in Sheffield.

The memoir promises to lift the lid on Papadakis’ partnership with Cizeron. In 2022, Papadakis spoke in a documentary about facing an unwanted pregnancy during the run-up to the Winter Olympic Games - claiming Cizeron and her coaching team told her to “deal with it and come back”.

Online, at least, the new Cizeron and Fournier Beaudry pairing has been largely vilified, mainly due to their perceived continued connections with Sorensen. However, on the ice, the couple have wowed the judges in their first season together, scoring the highest free dance score of the season at the Grand Prix de France.

Another surprise comeback pair, brother and sister team and Olympic bronze medallists Alex and Maia Shibutani from the US, known as the “Shib Sibs”, have not achieved the scores they may have hoped, ranking fifth and sixth in their Grand Prix assignments and failing to qualify for the Grand Prix Final. The return came as a shock for many, coming seven years after their retirement and six after Maia’s successful battle with a rare form of kidney cancer.

Meanwhile, one well established elite team has all but disappeared from the top flight. Italians Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri, two-time European champions and silver world medal winners, have scored disappointing marks in the Grand Prix series and failed to qualify for the prestigious final for the first time since 2018.

Scoring outrage

Outside of the changes to the competitor listings, there has been outrage over ice dance scoring this season amid claims of unfair judging.

Issues over this year’s Grand Prix judging panels were raised in November, when both Cizeron and Piper Gillies, who skates for Canada with Paul Poirier spoke out about downgraded levels of elements during the rhythm dance segment.

“Of course I’m angry,’’ said Cizeron. “I see some strange games being played that are destroying ice dance. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a competition like this in my career, from a judging standpoint…Everyone’s working like crazy and now I see the disappointment on their faces. Many are giving up.’’

After being scored unusually low for key elements, Gillies, who does not train at IAM, added: “We are made to feel a bit like junior skaters.”

An investigation has since been launched into the event by the International Skating Union (ISU).

However, two weeks later, at the Grand Prix Final, Cizeron and his partner had no such issues. The event was ultimately won by American team Chock and Bates, while Cizeron and Fournier Beaudry took the silver medal, despite a fall during the programme - an unusual occurrence in ice dance. Gibson and Fear won bronze.

Yet questions over judging bias came to a head again when Canadians Gillies and Poirier missed out on a medal, ending the event less than half a point behind Fear and Gibson, with the top three places all going to teams coached at IAM.

Some commentators have claimed publicly that IAM has politicked to get its skaters placed higher by judges.

Gillies posted on social media about the “state of ice dance” and said she was “not satisfied with the final result”. Later social media comments sent from her account were barbs aimed directly at IAM coach, Dubreuil.

Another such critic was Gillies’ husband, non-skater Nathan Kelly, who took to the comments section of the ISU’s Instagram page to elaborate on his dissatisfaction at the placings. Meanwhile another social media account, believed to belong to Gillies’ and Kelly’s dog, Oliver, also joined in in support.

“The quality of Piper and Paul’s edges, their overall skating skills and the emotional depth of their performance were so clearly superior to the British team,” wrote Oliverthegoldendoodle. “It is sad that there [sic] robbed. No faith in these judges.”

Canadian media has dedicated reams of air time to discussions comparing Gillies and Poirier’s routine favourably to that of Fear and Gibson, broadcasting direct comparisons of elements performed in the Grand Prix Final.

The consistently sunny British pair, who are well liked in the ice dance community, have kept their heads down amid a furore of which they have no fault, continuing to skate their routines with the energy and good humour for which they are renowned.

If they can hold their nerve, they are still in with a good medal chance in Milan. Yet this is not the positive Winter Olympic season they will have hoped for.