OLYMPIC FOCUS
Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron needed to find some calm within the seemingly relentless stormy waters of the past year. And with one major decision they made in January, the French ice dance duo settled the seas for what will be the most important year of their skating lives.
Choosing to skip the 2021 World Championships in Stockholm was anything but an easy call for the four-time World champions to make. But as they cast their eyes a year down the road toward the 2022 Olympic Winter Games in Beijing — an event where anything less than gold will not be acceptable to them — it seemed the most sensible one.
“For us, it was a very strange feeling to consider not going to Worlds. We are so used to going to Worlds and that is what we wanted to do. Fighting for titles is always very important to us,” the 25-year-old Papadakis said from her home in Montréal. “But we talked about all the options and what is more important to us. Is it to compete at Worlds or become the best that we can be for the Olympic season?
“Training for Worlds and being ready for a competition in a couple of months — and having the first competition of the season be Worlds and be at a championship level in two months with no other competitions — it just felt like it was a big risk, with too many difficulties and too many struggles. Not a lot of good things for us. So, we said, let’s make the best of the situation. And when we made the decision, we didn’t know if Worlds would happen or not.”
Papadakis and Cizeron were aware that if the competition did take place it would do so in an empty arena in Stockholm, Sweden, with no fans in attendance. That held little appeal for the French team, for whom the connection with audiences has always been especially important.
“When you start thinking about no public at Worlds … how fun was it really going to be to skate in front of no one but the judges?” Cizeron asked. “Going to a competition knowing that none of our
