ISU World Figure Skating Championships 2026: Laurence Fournier Beaudry/Guillaume Cizeron cap off monumental first season with title for historic treble
The French ice dancers followed up their Olympic gold with a world title. Canadians Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier repeated their silver result from a year ago, while Worlds debutants Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik of the USA took a maiden bronze to wrap up a breakout season.
Olympic champions, European champions, now world champions.
The introductions of Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron are getting longer after each competition – and it is only their first season of competing together.
One year on from the announcement in March 2025 that they were teaming up, the French ice dance duo have completed a unique triple of Olympic, world, and European titles in a single season with victory at the 2026 ISU World Figure Skating Championships, becoming the fourth team in figure skating history to have accomplished the feat.
“We lived it very well, it was a very beautiful moment, I think it is one of the moments we hope to experience in a skating career,” Cizeron said. “Having a full stadium like that, you feel their energy, you feel the moment slipping a bit through your fingers, I think we’re trying to have enough clarity in the moment to take advantage of it. I think we really did it tonight. We were a bit more relaxed than usual. I think it unbound us a lot. We had a lot of fun dancing.”
The French team had a 6.29-point lead over the Canadians Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier going into the free skate on Saturday (28 March) in Prague, Czechia, after scoring a personal best in the rhythm dance, but left nothing to chance with a dazzling performance of their “The Whale” finale. All their elements earned high grades of execution, from 2.25 to 4.80 for a particularly impressive curve lift.
As they finished their skate, Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron embraced and paused on the ice to soak in the moment, the O2 Arena erupting in cheers around them.
“We were very grateful for what we had just experienced, for the season we had,” Fournier Beaudry said. “It was the realisation of everything we did together, the journey we have made since last January. It is a great moment of relaxation and appreciation.”
“I think that having left the stage for a short time, you know how precious these moments are,” Cizeron, who retired after winning gold at Beijing 2022, added. “These are moments that I particularly like, the moment when you have just finished and you can just take this mental image that goes by so quickly.”
The performance earned them 138.07 points – improving on the personal best they set at Milano Cortina 2026 by 2.43 points and bumping their total to 230.81.
With this golden result, Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron join an elite list of skaters to complete the treble in one season. Marina Klimova and Sergey Ponomarenko were the last ice dancers to complete the feat, competing for the Unified Team in 1992. The other two teams were USSR’s Natalya Bestemyanova/Andrey Bukin in 1988, and Great Britain’s Jayne Torvill/Christopher Dean in 1984.
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French ice dancers Laurence Founier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron scored personal bests in both their skates to win gold at the 2026 ISU World Figure Skating Championships.
Feeling the pressure to recreate the magic of their Olympic medal night in Italy, 2025 world silver medallists Gilles and Poirier opted to change their free dance ahead of the world championships.
The “Vincent” program that the Canadians performed to win bronze at Milano Cortina 2026 was put lovingly to the side, while another memorable free dance, set to the 1992 film adaptation of the Wuthering Heights, was revived from two seasons ago.
Despite the last-minute change, Gilles and Poirier looked strong throughout their skate, earning 125.07 points (211.52 total) to pick up their third silver medal, and fifth medal overall, at the world championships.
“The free dance, as we expected, was going to be a challenge for us and it felt a little bit like that but again,” Gilles said. “We were ready for it and we created a program that we truly enjoy and I think the audience really love it as well. We created a moment that we wanted to and we’re really proud of that.”
