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For its artistic flair and fast spinning twizzles, ice dance is one of the more stylistic figure skating events at the Olympic Games.
This year at Milano Cortina 2026, the podium for the ice dance event is a wide open competition with a tight race for gold, featuring long-time favourites, along with surprising and controversial competitors.
The final day of the ice dance event takes place on Wednesday at 1:30 p.m. ET, with the top 20 teams competing in the free dance event.
Here are five teams to watch:
Piper Gilles/Paul Poirier (Canada)
The Canadians have long been known for their often quirky and unconventional style on the ice, from an Elton John inspired routine in 2022 to their fierce rhythm dance to RuPaul’s Supermodel at Milano Cortina 2026
The three-time Olympians have been skating together since 2011 and train out of Scarborough Ont, but they have yet to make an Olympic podium.
Now heading into what is likely their last Olympic Games, the reigning world silver medallists, sit in third place with a score of 86.18.
“We want to win the Olympics,” Poirier said in the new Netflix documentary, Glitter and Gold: Ice Dancing, released just before the start of the Winter Games.
“Paul and I look good in gold,” Gilles said.
Gilles and Poirier’s road to the Olympic podium has been rocky over the years. Gilles lost her mother to glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, just after their first Olympic Games in 2018.
Canadian ice dance duo Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier are in podium position, after scoring 86.18 points to finish in third place in the rhythm dance.
In 2022, Gilles herself was diagnosed with Stage 1 ovarian cancer and underwent precautionary surgery. She has since been cancer free.
The pair had originally intended to retire after the Beijing 2022 Olympics, but then made the decision to return for Milano Cortina.
“We didn’t even know that this opportunity was going to come three years ago, or that we were going to come to the Olympics,” Gillies told reporters after the rhythm dance on Monday.
“We still feel there’s more for us to accomplish and celebrate. It’s allowed us to be better competitors, because every time we step on the ice to go compete [we know] skating like this is a small piece in our life.”
Laurence Fournier Beaudry/Guillaume Cizeron (France)
While both skaters are multi-time Olympians, Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron are new to their partnership, having only begun skating together in 2025, making this their first competitive season together.
The pair are also featured on Glitter and Gold: Ice Dancing, which shares some of the controversy and tension surrounding the unlikely pair.
Cizeron is a two-time medallist, including capturing Olympic gold at the Beijing Games with his former partner Gabriella Papadakis.
The pair retired from ice dance in 2024, but comments around a recent book published by Papadakis show the former partners might not be on the best of terms at the moment.
Fournier Beaudry, who was born in Montreal, previously represented Canada at the Beijing Olympics with her former partner and current boyfriend Nikolaj Sørensen, where they placed ninth.
Sørensen was accused in 2024 of sexually assaulting an American figure skater in 2012. He was and was issued a six-year ban from the sport, which was later overturned and is currently under review. Sørensen has denied the allegation, which has not been tested in court.
France’s Guillaume Cizeron and his partner, former Canadian skater Laurence Fournier Beaudry, scored 90.18 points to take top spot in the rhythm dance.
The pair did perform their rhythm dance program during the team event last week. The French team did not qualify for the team event finals this past Sunday.
In the short dance on Monday, they set a personal-best score of 90.18, improving on their performance from the team event, and standing in first place heading into the free dance.
“Of course, we want to win,” Fournier Beaudry told reporters on Monday.
“At the same time, we want to enjoy being here, because those are the memories that we’ll bring back home.”
Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron currently train in Montreal.
Madison Chock/Evan Bates (United States)
Before the surprise entrance of Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron, Americans Chock and Bates were the favourites to win the gold medal at Milano Cortina 2026.
They also share the same coach as their rivals.
The pair, who have been together since 2011 and married in 2024, are four-time Olympians, two-time Olympic gold medallists in the team event, and the reigning three-time world ice dance champions.
But the couple has had some bad luck in this event, falling in the free dance program at Pyeongchang 2018 and then placing fourth at Beijing 2022.
The three-time world champions Madison Chock and Evan Bates edged closer to repeating as Olympic team champions, by winning the team free dance.
The couple almost decided to retire after Beijing, but as they told audiences in Glitter and Gold: Ice Dancing, decided to make one last attempt at that Olympic gold medal.
During Monday’s rhythm dance performance, Chock and Bates put down a score of 89.72 placing them second behind Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron.
Although the two appeared slightly disappointed to be in second, Chock told reporters “the game” is still on.
“You should know us by now: we’re not changing anything,” she said Monday.
“We’ve got this locked in, we know ourselves, we know our routine, and we got this.”
Lilah Fear/Lewis Gibson (Great Britain)
Currently ranked No. 1 in the world by the International Skating Union rankings, this British team is the surprise team of the event.
Fear and Gibson, who are competing at their second Olympic Games, where they placed 10th at Beijing 2022, are the bronze medallists at the 2026 European championships.
Gibson told reporters Monday the pair have made improvements since those championships and “really pushed the quality of our skating [since] that time.”
“It’s translating into the technique as well, which is great because it feels good,” he said.
The pair scored 85.47 points in the rhythm dance, placing them less than a point behind Gilles and Poirier.
Fear and Gibson currently train in Montreal and share coaches with both Chock and Bates and Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron.
Charlène Guignard/Marco Fabbri (Italy)
While currently in fifth going into the free dance program, the Italian duo should not be left out of the conversation.
The hometown favourites from Milan, Guignard and Fabbri were part of the team that claimed bronze in the figure skating team event on Sunday.
The pair skated a fun and nostalgic rhythm dance to the backstreet boys, scoring 84.28, less than half a point off their season best.
Fabbri, 38 and Guignard, 36, have been partners since 2010 and are the oldest team in the ice dance competition.
“We are certainly the oldest ones on the team and the ones with a bit more experience at the Olympics. But at the end of the day, we are a team,” Fabbri told reporters on Saturday.
Milano Cortina 2026 will be the Italian stars’ last Olympic Games.
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