French ice skaters Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron have defiantly spoken out after their gold medal victory at the Winter Olympics was mired in cheating controversy.
The French pairing – whose personal lives have both been engulfed in scandal – were crowned Olympic champions in ice dancing with a total score of 225.82, just 1.43 points ahead of the USA’s Madison Chock and Evan Bates.
However, their triumph in Milan-Cortina was shrouded in scandal as French judge Jezabel Dabouis was accused of ‘rigging’ her votes to boost her country’s standing, in turn knocking the Americans down into the silver medal position.
Yet, Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron have now shut down the claims of favoritism as they insisted that they are refusing to allow the criticism to overshadow their win.
Speaking on French radio, Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron claimed that they should have won by an even greater margin, insisting that they had performed a riskier program than their American rivals.
‘We had the goal of winning by five to seven points, but we made a few mistakes that cost us three or four points,’ Cizeron told the Super Moscato Show on RMC.
Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron shut down claims their gold win was rigged
The French pair beat the USA’s Madison Chock and Evan Bates to gold at the Winter Olympics
They claimed that the deduction stemmed from a loss of balance while coming out of a level four maneuver. ‘He didn’t really make a mistake, he just decided to be creative in the moment,’ Fournier Beaudry joked.
The gold medalists appeared to suggest that their belief their score would have been higher with a perfect routine dispelled any accusations that their victory was not legitimate.
Cizeron claimed that he was questioning whether he had cost his team a shot at gold. ‘It’s a mental battle to keep going and link the elements together, to get back into it and go for the points,’ he added.
‘You have to cut off those negative thoughts that come in very quickly, and that’s where twenty years of experience come into play.’
Despite Cizeron and Fournier Beaudry’s insistence, Olympic fans – and Chock and Bates – have been left in denial.
Thousands of fans have signed a Change.org petition calling for the IOC and International Skating Union to intervene and launch a probe into the voting process, but so far nothing has been forthcoming.
In fact, the ISU has opted to stand by her, issuing its first statement late on Thursday.
‘It is normal for there to be a range of scores given by different judges in any panel and a number of mechanisms are used to mitigate these variations,’ it read, adding it has ‘full confidence in the scores given and remains completely committed to fairness.’
The gold medalists have claimed that their program should have scored even higher
Jezabel Dabouis, the French judge on the panel for the Winter Olympics competition
Chock and Bates have since spoken to CBS News about the dubious judging after allegations the competition was ‘rigged’ against them.
Chock said: ‘It would definitely be helpful if it’s more understandable for the viewers, to just see more transparent judging and understand… what’s really going on.
‘I think it’s also important for the skaters that the judges be vetted and reviewed to make sure that they are also putting out their best performance.
‘There’s a lot on the line for the skaters when they’re out there giving it their all, and we deserve to have the judges also giving us their all and for it to be a fair and even playing field.’
Judge Dabouis favored Beaudry and Cizeron by nearly eight points over the three-time world champions in the free dance, a margin so large that if her score was removed from the equation, Chock and Bates would have won gold.
There is little recourse for the US pair if the global governing body is unwilling to investigate the scoring discrepancy.
This is not the first time Dabouis has turned in questionable scores for Beaudry and Cizeron. Last year, at the Grand Prix of Figure Skating in Japan, the French pair missed one element of their routine and also had a fall which would usually keep them well away from the podium places. Dabouis rewarded them with a superb score and they took silver.
The French judge also had a wide margin favoring her country in the Olympic rhythm dance, when they also beat the US team.
Gutted American ice skaters Chock and Bates called for the judges to be ‘vetted’
Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron only teamed up in March last year but their brief career together has been dogged by ‘toxic’ allegations about their pasts.
Fournier Beaudry has faced intense scrutiny over her relationship with boyfriend and former skating partner, Nikolaj Sorensen, who was suspended in 2024 following allegations of a 2012 sexual assault involving a former skater and coach.
He denied the accusations and, though his six-year suspension from Skate Canada was eventually overturned on a technicality, the scandal effectively ended his competitive career. Fournier Beaudry recently lamented the situation in the Netflix docuseries ‘Glitter & Gold’, claiming the ordeal ruined her partner’s life.
Meanwhile, Cizeron arrived in Milan facing explosive claims from his former gold-medal-winning partner, Gabriella Papadakis.
In an interview ahead of her memoir ‘So as Not to Disappear’, Papadakis described Cizeron as ‘controlling, demanding and critical.’ She wrote that she felt under his ‘control’ and was ‘terrified’ of being alone with him during their time as a world-leading pair.
Cizeron has hit back at the claims, labeling them a ‘smear campaign’ and confirming he is pursuing legal action. ‘I want to express my incomprehension and disagreement with the labels attributed to me,’ he told Reuters. ‘The book contains false information, including statements I never made, which I consider serious.’