Lewis Gibson did his best to smile, but the pained pinch on the face of his partner, Lilah Fear, as they twirled around the Milan Ice Skating Arena gave the game away. The Team GB pair had dreamed of becoming the first British Olympic skating medallists since Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean in 1992. Instead, they endured a nightmare on ice.
Their chances went barely a minute into their free dance routine. The crowd had just started to clap boisterously along to the Proclaimers’ hit I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles), when Fear stumbled and lost her balance through the twizzle sequence.
One yellow box, a signal of a technical error, quickly became two and, instead of eyeing bronze, they slumped down the rankings from fourth after the rhythm dance on Monday to seventh.
“I can’t believe I just did that,” Fear said. “I feel so bad, I’m devastated. I’m in shock. It’s such a shame because I know what we’re capable of. I just feel so bad. I don’t have the words yet and it will take a while to process it.”
Asked to describe what had happened, she said: “Just a really costly technical mistake, which was tough very early in the programme because I knew that we lost bronze at that point.
“But I also really wanted to not let the Olympic experience just disappear because of that, so it’s this battle of taking it in and doing my best the rest of the way while also knowing what I’d just done.”
Gibson agreed. “When you don’t perform the way you want to on any day it’s tough to take, but at the Olympic Games it’s even harder,” he said.
Gold went to the controversial French couple, Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron, with 225.82 points, after their routine earned them a top-scoring 135.64pts. Not everyone in the arena was convinced that such a high score was justified.
The pair, who teamed up last year when Fournier Beaudry changed her citizenship from Canada to France, have faced deeper scrutiny. Part of that is down to allegations made by Cizeron’s former partner, Gabriella Papadakis, and the suspension of Fournier Beaudry’s former partner, Nikolaj Sørensen.
In January, Papadakis’s memoir, So as Not to Disappear, called Cizeron “controlling” and “demanding”, allegations he has described as defamatory. When asked last week about the book, Cizeron said: “I’ve said everything that I needed to say on that subject.”
In 2024 Sørensen was suspended for six years by Canada’s Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner for sexual maltreatment. The suspension has been overturned by the Sport Dispute Resolution Centre of Canada on jurisdictional grounds.
The American couple, Madison Chock and Evan Bates, the reigning three‑time world champions, had to settle for silver on 224.39pts, after scoring 134.67 in their free dance routine.
The one consolation for Fear and Gibson? Even if they had skated their best they probably would not have beaten the 217.73 by the Canadian pair of Paul Poirier and Piper Gilles, who claimed bronze.
Fear’s and Gibson’s free dance score of 118.35 – 12th in the section – gave them an overall score of 204.32. Fear was in tears afterwards.
Jon Eley, the performance director at British Ice Skating, said their routine did not reflect their quality. “I’m gutted,” he said.
“They have shown over the last cycle and this season as well how good they really are. It was at the end of a sequence of twizzles, which had cost them points.
“They practise it multiple times a day. It’s one of the toughest moves in ice dance. They are pushing the limits with all the different things they do. For them not to deliver on this stage is upsetting for them and us.”
Fear tried to look on the bright side when asked what she would say to her eight-year-old self.
“I think my eight-year-old self would be really proud of me,” she said. “I wanted to come out here and enjoy the Olympic experience and skate for me and skate for Lewis.”
The pain was evident in her words. The performance means that British skating will have to wait even longer to scratch the itch that has been around since the early 1990s, while Team GB’s humdrum start to these Games goes on.
