MILAN ― What an awful message the sport of figure skating just sent to sexual abuse survivors and victims, and parents who want their children to participate in a safe sport.
Figure skating just put Olympic gold medals around the necks of a French ice dance team that exists only because of the investigation and subsequent suspension of an alleged sexual abuser, Nikolaj Sorensen, who has been consistently and publicly supported by that team of Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron.
Fournier Beaudry, 33, who is Sorensen’s girlfriend, joined forces with Cizeron a year ago after Sorensen was banned for a minimum of six years for allegedly sexually assaulting a U.S. skater in 2012. His suspension was overturned last year but is being reviewed, meaning the ban could be put back into place. He was in the Olympic arena Wednesday night, and when the French team spotted him in the crowd, they joyously waved from the podium, and he whistled back.
Figure skating also just gave a second consecutive Olympic gold medal to Cizeron, 31, who was described by his former ice dance partner, 2022 Olympic gold medalist Gabriella Papadakis, as ‘often controlling, demanding and critical.” She said she would not skate with him unless a coach was present at practices.
During an interview with USA TODAY’s podcast Milan Magic about her new memoir ‘To Not Disappear,’ Papadakis said her skating relationship with Cizeron ‘was a dynamic that was profoundly harmful and dangerous to me, that took me a very, very, very long time to understand.”
‘I was trying to write about how these dynamics creep (into) a partnership and in a relationship,” Papadakis said, ‘how these dynamics can become incredibly dangerous.”
That guy now has a second gold medal.
Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron upset three-time reigning world champions Madison Chock and Evan Bates of the United States by nearly a point and a half, 225.82 points to 224.39, adding to the slight lead they held after Monday’s rhythm dance.
What a slap in the face this result is to Chock and Bates, four-time Olympians and seven-time national champions who had never won an individual Olympic medal until Wednesday’s silver. They have been the heart and soul of the American team for the past four years at least. At the 2022 Olympics in Beijing, they were the American team figure skating captains, tasked with consistently and calmly handling the most excruciatingly ridiculous series of events precipitated by yet another Russian doping scandal at the Olympics, this one the Kamila Valieva saga.
Their patience paid off when they stood in the sunshine at the base of the Eiffel Tower at the 2024 Summer Olympics, receiving their gold medals.
If you’re picking role models for your kids, you go with Chock and Bates 100 times out of 100.
And talk about taking one for the team: Their performance in the free dance Wednesday was their fourth program skated in six days. That’s a lot, especially for athletes who are not in their teens or 20s. Bates is almost 37. Chock is 33. That is not young in skating years.
But by winning both of their programs in the team competition, they put their teammates, especially Ilia Malinin, in position to win the gold medal, which they did Sunday night. So they have two team golds, which matter to them greatly, but not the gold they were most dreaming of.
It was a sad evening for them, and a sadder one for their sport.