MILAN, Feb 11 (Reuters) - France's Guillaume Cizeron said he was still in shock after reclaiming Olympic ice dance gold in Milan on Wednesday with new partner Laurence Fournier Beaudry, less than a year after the pair had teamed up.
Fournier Beaudry, 33, a Canadian‑born skater who received her French citizenship just in time for the Games, joined Cizeron last March in a last‑minute collaboration.
"Oh my God, we're still in shock," Cizeron said.
"Looking back a year ago when we started dreaming of this, it's pretty incredible what we've been through and the work and the love that we've put into our training and our skating and the support that we've had along the way, we couldn’t be more grateful and proud."
Cizeron, 31, became the first ice dancer to win back‑to‑back Olympic titles with two different partners. In Beijing he won gold with Gabriella Papadakis.
In Milan, the Cizeron-Fournier Beaudry duo scored 225.82 points, finishing just over a point ahead of Americans Madison Chock and Evan Bates (224.39) to complete a whirlwind rise from first try‑out to Olympic champions.
Fournier Beaudry praised Cizeron's steadiness when it mattered most.
"He's the best. And that's what I was telling myself when sometimes I was getting scared," she said.
"The confidence that he was able to bring to me through the whole season is probably one of the things that made us achieve what we could achieve today," she said.
Cizeron said heart over perfection tipped the balance against their U.S. rivals.
"We knew we hadn't delivered a perfect performance, but I think our focus tonight was really to skate with our hearts," Cizeron said.
"The pressure is enormous in this kind of competition ... I think we gave the best performance we were capable of tonight. And we really tried to give it our all."
Although together for less than a year, their skating has quickly developed a signature identity — expressive, elegant, and steeped in French artistry.
Their free dance to the soundtrack of "The Whale" underscored that aesthetic, combining rich emotional tone with technical execution.
"This choreography is like our baby. We love it so much," Cizeron said. "We love performing it. We've loved creating it, we've loved rehearsing it, and we're going to be sad when we stop performing it, because it's very special to our hearts."
They described the emotional whiplash before skating and while awaiting the scores.
"When we finished the performance and were waiting for the scores, it was a little stressful," Fournier Beaudry said. "But now we're on cloud nine and it's hard to believe."
The duo did not want to speculate on what comes next.
"This was pretty much as far as we looked into the future. This was our main goal," Cizeron said. "So it's really hard to say what the future is."
(Reporting by Agnieszka Flak; Editing by Peter Rutherford)
