ice dancing
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Four years after the Olympic silver and despite a turned upside down Olympiad, Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron are the favorites for gold in ice dancing from this Saturday. They have concentrated all their efforts in this ultimate quest.
Rarely have the Epinal Masters (Vosges), scheduled from September 30 to October 2, raised so many expectations. Normally, the event marks the resumption of the skating season in France. In time of Olympic year, the top of the French delegation comes there to refine its programs in view of the Games. There was an additional reason for enthusiasm for this edition: the return to competition of Gabriella Papadakis (26 years old) and Guillaume Cizeron (27 years old), after twenty months away from the rinks.
Suffice to say an eternity, in an environment where world and European championships follow one another every year. The couple of skaters with overflowing prize lists – they are quadruple world champions (2015, 2016, 2018 and 2019) and five-time European champions (2015-2019) – came to begin the last stage of their path to Olympic gold in dance on ice, the only one that still leaks them to this day. The discipline is a combo of two programs, the rhythmic (this Saturday noon) and the free (Monday from 2:15 a.m.), the accumulation of the two scores giving the final score.
Not only did the Auvergnats claim victory, but with a total of 231.10 points, they would even have set a new world record if the results of this national event were taken into account by the International Skating Union (ISU). ). A few weeks later, in Cergy (Val-d’Oise), they offered themselves a seventh title of champions of France, with 94.48 points in rhythmic dance, signing, again, a sco…