French ice dancers Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron completed a successful defense of their world title with a sparkling free routine in Japan on Saturday.
Now four-time world champions, they made headlines for the wrong reasons at last year’s Winter Olympics after a wardrobe malfunction that left Papadakis overexposed during their rhythm dance routine.
But there was little danger of a repeat with Papadakis in a figure-hugging, long-sleeved pink top cut above the waist as the gold medal favourites nailed their twizzles and curve lifts with a fluidity their rivals couldn’t come close to.
Papadakis and Cizeron scored 134.23 points to finish with a world record total of 222.65 with Russians Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov taking silver on 211.76.
23-year-old Gabriella Papadakis was born in Clermont-Ferrand, France. She is the daughter of Catherine, a skating coach, and Emmanuel, the owner of a food truck in Austin, Texas. Her father is from Korydallos, Athens, Greece, and his family has roots in Crete.
She relocated from France to Montreal, Quebec, Canada, in 2014.
With her partner, Guillaume Cizeron, she is the 2018 Olympic silver medalist, a four-time World champion (2015–2016, 2018–2019), a five-time consecutive European champion (2015–2019), the 2017 Grand Prix Final champion, and a five-time French national champion (2015–2019).
Papadakis/Cizeron have won six gold medals on the Grand Prix series.
They are the historical world record holders in short dance, free dance, and combined total.
[enca, wikipedia]
