Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron followed their Olympic ice dance title with a world championship — by the largest margin in history — in their first season together.
The French couple totaled 230.81 points, winning by 19.29 over Canadians Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier in Prague, Czechia.
“We lived such a moment out there,” Fournier Beaudry said.
It’s the largest ice dance margin of victory at worlds since the 6.0 scoring system was replaced after 2004. The previous record was 10.89 points set by Cizeron and his former partner, Gabriella Papadakis, in 2019.
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Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik took bronze in their worlds debut together, extending the U.S. streak to 11 consecutive worlds with at least one dance medal.
“I’m still shaking,” Zingas said. “I can’t calm down. I don’t understand what just happened.”
Zingas and Kolesnik moved up from fourth after Friday’s rhythm dance, passing Brits Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson by 22 hundredths to get on the podium.
Fear and Gibson, the 2025 World bronze medalists, received a two-point penalty in Saturday’s free dance for an illegal movement on their first element, a stationary lift.
The skaters said the illegal movement was regarding the straightness of Gibson’s arm(s) during the lift.
“It’s impossible for me to do it like that, first of all, and we’ve not had an issue with that lift all season long,” Gibson told Okko.
“It’s just confusing for us, and, obviously, they have the authority with the calls, but we were hoping to have some more understanding of why that call was made in a way that makes sense to us,” Fear said.
Fear added in a BBC interview that they were not “at peace with the decision.”
In a statement Saturday night (U.S. time), the British skating federation said it believed the deduction was “applied incorrectly,” is “formally challenging” the decision and “calling for a full and independent review of the officiating process to ensure accountability and fairness for all athletes.”
An International Skating Union spokesperson said in an email Sunday, “As a field of play decision, the deduction is final and not subject to appeal. A well-established process is in place for the review and analysis of scoring from all competitions with fairness to the skaters on the ice of paramount importance.”
Zingas and Kolesnik capped a breakout season. They were fourth at the January 2025 U.S. Championships, then sixth-best in the world in last fall’s Grand Prix season and fifth in their Olympic debut in Milan.
They are the first couple to win a medal in each’s world ice dance debut since Americans Maia Shibutani and Alex Shibutani in 2011.
“It’s a miracle on ice,” Kolesnik said.
Americans Madison Chock and Evan Bates, who won the last three world titles and silver at the Milan Cortina Games, skipped these worlds, saying they “left it all on the ice in Milan” and that their “season feels complete.” Olympic medalists often skip the post-Olympic worlds.
Chock, 33, and Bates, 37, haven’t said whether they plan to compete again. Potentially, Zingas and Kolesnik could be the new standard-bearers for U.S. ice dance.
“Madi and Evan led the way for us,” Zingas said. “They paved the road. They showed what U.S. ice dance is about, and now we get to take the torch and carry it strongly.”
The other U.S. couples finished eighth (Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko) and 12th (Caroline Green and Michael Parsons).
Carreira and Ponomarenko were once the heirs apparent to Chock and Bates, placing second at nationals in 2024 and 2025, plus fifth at worlds last year.
They had a tough start to this season -- missing the podium at both of their Grand Prix events -- then made their first Olympics (placed 11th) and finished the season in Prague by breaking the 200-point barrier internationally for the first time since 2025 Worlds.
“We’re back scoring where we believe we were we should be scoring,” Ponomarenko said.
Green and Parsons, who were fourth at nationals, subbed in for Chock and Bates on the world team. They were sixth and ninth in two previous world appearances.
“We’re happy that we’re here,” Parsons said. “Obviously, we wish that we could have had a season where we weren’t just alternates, but I think we’ve made the most of that opportunity, and we still earned it.”
Cizeron tied the record with a sixth career ice dance world title. He won world titles with Papadakis in 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019 and 2022, plus Olympic gold in 2022.
Papadakis and Cizeron announced a joint retirement in December 2024, two and a half years after their last competition together.
Then in March 2025, Cizeron and Fournier Beaudry, who formerly competed for Canada, announced their partnership.
Lyudmila Pakhomova and Aleksandr Gorshkov, a Soviet couple from the 1970s, also won six world titles.
World championships highlights air Saturday at 8 p.m. ET on NBC and Peacock.
