Peak moment on the fifth day of the Olympics
USA TODAY breaks down the biggest events from Day 5 of the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics.
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MILAN – What a terrible message the sport of figure skating sends to survivors and victims of sexual abuse, and to parents who want their children to participate in a safe sport.
Figure skating just won an Olympic gold medal for the French ice dance team, which exists thanks to the investigation and subsequent suspension of sexual abuse suspect Nicolai Sorensen and has been consistently publicly supported by the team of Laurence Fournier Baudry and Guillaume Cizeron.
Sorensen’s girlfriend Fournier Beaudry, 33, joined forces with Cizeron a year ago after Sorensen was suspended for at least six years for sexually assaulting an American skater in 2012. His suspension was revoked last year but is currently under review and the suspension could be reinstated. On Wednesday night, he was in the Olympic arena, and when the French team spotted him in the crowd, they waved gleefully from the podium and he whistled back.
Cizeron’s former ice dance partner and 2022 Olympic gold medalist Gabriela Papadakis, who just brought the 31-year-old Cizeron his second consecutive Olympic gold medal in figure skating, described him as “dominating, demanding, and judgmental.” She said she wouldn’t skate with him unless a coach was present at practice.
In an interview with USA TODAY’s Milan Magic podcast about his new memoir, “To Not Disappear,” Papadakis said his skating relationship with Cizeron was “a very toxic and dangerous dynamic for me, and it took me a very, very, very long time to understand that.”
“I was trying to write about how these dynamics creep into partnerships and relationships, and how these dynamics can be incredibly dangerous,” Papadakis said.
The man has now won his second gold medal.
Fournier-Beaudry and Cizeron defeated three-time reigning world champions Madison Chock and Evan Bates of the United States by nearly 1.5 points, 225.82 to 224.39, extending the slim lead they held after Monday’s rhythm dance.
What a slap in the face this result is for Chock and Bates, four-time Olympians and seven-time national champions who had never won an Olympic individual medal until Wednesday’s silver medal. They have been the heart and soul of Team USA for at least the past four years. At the 2022 Beijing Olympics, they, as captains of the U.S. figure skating team, were tasked with consistently and calmly addressing the most excruciatingly ridiculous series of events that the Russian doping scandal at the Olympics has once again triggered, this one being the Kamila Valieva saga.
Their patience paid off when they won a gold medal at the 2024 Summer Olympics, soaking up the sun at the base of the Eiffel Tower.
If I had to choose a role model for my kids, 100 times out of 100 I would choose Chock and Bates.
And talk about taking it for the team. Their performance at Wednesday’s free dance was the fourth program they had skated in six days. That’s a big deal, especially for athletes who aren’t teenagers or 20s. Bates is almost 37 years old. Chock is 33 years old. He is not young in terms of his skating history.
But by winning against both programs in the team competition, she put her teammates, especially Ilia Marin, in position to win the gold medal, which she won Sunday night. So they have two team gold medals, which is very important to them, but not the gold medal they most dreamed of.
It was a sad night for them, but an even sadder night for their sport.
