Gilles & Poirier skate to ice dance bronze at Milano Cortina 2026

Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier have won the bronze medal in ice dance at the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games.

The four-time world championship medallists finally reached the podium in their third Olympic appearance together.

They were sitting in third place following the rhythm dance, just 0.71 ahead of Great Britain’s Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson. But the path to the podium became a little more open after the British duo made a major error on their twizzle sequence in the free dance and dropped down the standings to seventh place.

Immediately afterwards, Gilles and Poirier had the performance of their lives. They chose this season to go back to a free dance they first used in the 2018-19 season, performed to the song “Vincent”. It has an emotional resonance for them and that emotion flooded out when they finished, with both of them crying. They scored 131.56 for their free dance and an overall total of 217.74, launching them into first place with just two teams to go.

Those two teams had been ahead of Gilles and Poirier in the rhythm dance and remained there after the free dance. Madison Chock and Evan Bates of the United States earned a free dance score of 134.67 for a total of 224.39 and the silver medal. Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron got 135.64 in the free dance for a total of 225.82 to take the gold medal.

It is Canada’s fifth Olympic medal all-time in ice dance and fourth in the last five Games. Tracy Wilson and Rob McCall won the first, a bronze on home ice at Calgary 1988. Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir became legends of the sport with their three straight medals, taking gold at Vancouver 2010 and PyeongChang 2018 around a silver medal at Sochi 2014.