Olympic ice dance champions Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron of France announced their retirement from competitive figure skating,
Papadakis, 29, and Cizeron, 30, followed their 2018 Olympic silver with gold in 2022, then competed for the last time in March 2022, winning their fifth world title on home ice in Montpellier.
“We could not have dreamed of a more beautiful career,” they said in a joint statement, according to a translation.
They began skating together when they were 9 years old, first coached by Papadakis’ mother, a former competitive skater. Papadakis’ dad formerly operated a Greek food truck in Austin, Texas, called “Big Fat Greek Gyros.”
They broke through at the 2015 World Championships, going from fourth in the short dance to overtake Americans Madison Chock and Evan Bates for the title. They are the youngest world ice dance champions of the last 50 years.
In the 2016-17 season, Papadakis and Cizeron were supplanted as the world’s top couple by 2010 Olympic gold medalists Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir of Canada, who returned from a two-year break.
Virtue and Moir won the 2018 Olympic title by 79 hundredths of a point over the French. It was the closest Olympic ice dance under a points-accumulating scoring system that made its Olympic debut in 2006.
After Virtue and Moir left competition, Papadakis and Cizeron lost just one event in the 2022 Olympic cycle and won the 2022 Olympic title by 6.47 points, the largest margin under the current scoring system.
Since Papadakis and Cizeron left competitive skating two years ago, Chock and Bates ascended to the top of ice dance, winning the last two world titles.
Chock and Bates go for a repeat Grand Prix Final title this week. A broadcast schedule is here.
