The ice dance competition at Milan-Cortina 2026 reached a thrilling conclusion, with a podium of the highest quality.

American husband and wife Evan Bates and Madison Chock - gold medallists in the team event and three-time world champions - took silver, with bronze going to Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier of Canada.

The champions - who scored highest in both rhythm and free dance, the two segments of competition - are a duo who only competed for the first time last November but instantly clicked.

Guillaume Cizeron, 31, won the ice dance title at Beijing 2022, and his new partnership with 33-year-old Laurence Fournier Beaudry has earned him back-to-back golds.

Since partnering, Cizeron and Fournier Beaudry have now won five of the six major competitions they have entered, including the 2026 European Championship in Sheffield - and now the Milan-Cortina 2026 Olympics.

"It was a lot of work, but from the beginning we had a lot of similarities in the way we trained and approached things," Cizeron told the post-event news conference on why he and Fournier Baudry have clicked so quickly.

"It was also a chance to evolve, it was playful, we had a lot of fun from the beginning. "

Their beautiful free dance to the soundtrack from The Whale followed a technically flawless performance to Madonna's Vogue in the rhythm dance. The combined scores of both segments decided the medals. While the free dance allows couples greater freedom in their routines, the rhythm dance contains required elements for more direct comparison.

The judges determined the French pair to had a better technical score on their step sequence than the Americans - hence their slight advantage of 0.

46 points going into the free dance. The objectivity of figure skating judging is a controversy as old as the Olympics and a story for another day. So there was plenty of intrigue on the ice - and that is nothing compared to the drama off it

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