dream win

Gay skater Guillaume Cizeron and partner Gabriella Papadakis win OIympic gold

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Out, gay skater Guillaume Cizeron and dance partner Gabriella Papadakis have won the gold medal at the Winter Olympics in the pairs ice dancing.

The French couple, who put on a stunning display of synchronicity, also earned themselves a record-breaking score of 226.98 in the process.

Their triumph comes four years after they won a silver medal at the Pyeongchang Games in South Korea. On that occasion, Papadakis suffered a “wardrobe malfunction” and her dress came apart. Papadakis said at the time, “I felt it right away and I prayed. It was pretty distracting, kind of my worst nightmare happening at the Olympics.”

Related: Out, skater Eric Radford strips down to show off Olympic tattoo

For their Valentine’s Day winning routine, they danced to Gabriel Fauré’s Élégie. Check out video clips below.

On Instagram, Cizeron called the gold medal win, “Un rêve” (“A dream”).

Cizeron, 27, lives in Montreal, Canada, but competes for France.

Although he says he was never really in the closet, the first time he publicly made it clear he was LGBTQ was when he posted a photo of himself and his boyfriend to Instagram in 2020. He was blown away by the response, telling the French, gay magazine Tetu a week later, “It was quite funny how people reacted to this photo. I would not consider myself in the closet before posting this [photo], so I don’t really consider it coming out.

“Even though I have never spoken publicly about my sexual orientation, I am one of those who think that it is not something that [people] should have to do. Straight people don’t come out. … I still hesitated a bit before publishing. Because I’m not in the habit of revealing really intimate things. I don’t know what got into me, I said to myself, ‘What do I have to lose?’”

Cizeron is the second out, LGBTQ athlete to take a gold medal in Beijing. Dutch speed skater Ireen Wüst won her sixth Winter Olympics gold medal in the women’s 1,500-meter final last week.

 

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