Ice Dance, Mixed

The figure skating ice dance event at the Milano-Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games was held on 9 and 11 February at the Milano Ice Skating Arena. It featured 46 athletes (23 pairs) from 15 nations.

It was one of the most anticipated and competitive showdowns in figure skating, with the top contenders from Canada, France and the United States. Olympic veterans and three-time reigning World Champions (2023, 2024, 2025), [Madison Chock](() and her husband Evan Bates (USA) were looking for the individual Olympic medal that had eluded them, having won golds in the team event at Beijing 2022 and again in 2026, just a day before ice dance started.

France’s Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron both competed with different partners at Beijing 2022, where Fournier Beaudry represented Canada with Nikolaj Sorensen (ninth), and Cizeron (FRA) won the Olympic title with Gabriella Papadakis, but then retired two years later. The new French team, together for only a year, became favourites after they won every event they entered this season, save the Grand Prix Final, when they finished second to Chock/Bates (USA) in their previous head-to-head meeting. The French and American teams were quite familiar with each other because they had the same coaches – two-time Olympians in 2002/2006 Marie-France Dubreuil/Patrice Lauzon and Romain Haguenauer – and both trained at the renowned Ice Academy of Montreal.

Four-time World Championship medalists (two silver, two bronze), Canada’s Piper Gilles (a stage-1 ovarian cancer survivor) and Paul Poirier were likely in a fight for the bronze with Britain’s Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson. Hopes for the home team rested with three-time Olympic veterans, Italians Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri, who, despite early-season struggles, remained genuine medal threats and looked to draw energy from the home crowd.

The rhythm dance theme featured iconic 1990s-inspired music, and the top three teams were separated by just a few points, creating a very tight head-to-head battle for the top of the Olympic podium going into the free dance. Fournier Beaudry/Cizeron set a massive personal best score of 90.18 points to put them in first, followed closely by, less than half a point, Chock/Bates with 89.72 points in second, with Gilles/Poirer in third with a season-best score of 86.18 points, keeping alive their podium hopes.

Fournier Beaudry/Cizeron carried their 0.46-point lead into the free skate, and even though Cizeron made several mistakes, including a glaring one during his twizzle sequence, the French judge favoured them by nearly eight points in the free dance. They scored 135.64 points to Chock/Bates’ 134.67 points, which gave the newly formed French team a combined points total victory margin of 1.43 points for the gold. Even though the nine judges for the free dance had Chock/Bates (USA) with top scores from five judges, while Fournier Beaudry/Cizeron (FRA) had top scores from four judges, the results were determined by total points, not majority judge placement. Cizeron (FRA) became only the second ice dancer in history to win consecutive Olympic gold medals with two different partners.

For Chock/Bates, partners for 15 years, the silver medal, although bittersweet, was their first Olympic ice dance podium, earned in their fourth – and likely final – Olympic Winter Games. Gilles/Poirier, who had skated together since 2011, delivered a season-best 131.56 points in the free dance and a season-best total of 217.74 points to secure their first Olympic medal – a bronze – in their third Olympic appearance. They were the first Canadians to make the individual ice dance podium since Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir’s gold-medal performance at PyeongChang 2018. Hometown favourites from Milano and team event bronze medalists Guignard/Fabbri, finished in fourth with a free dance score of 125.30 points and an overall score of 209.58 points. It was their top Olympic ice dance result since they made their début at Sochi 2014.

Milla Ruud Reitan and Nikolaj Majorov made history as the first Swedish ice dance team ever to qualify for the Olympic Winter Games. Their spot came after Finland relinquished a second ice dance quota place when one of their skaters could not obtain citizenship in time, and the spot was then reallocated to Sweden. They finished 20th.