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Diana Davis and Gleb Smolkin of Georgia compete in mixed team free dance during the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games at Milano Ice Skating Arena. James Lang-Imagn Images

Tears, twizzles and Tom Jones: Inside a wild first day of Olympic ice dance

By Alyssa Clang | Last updated Feb 9, 2026 5:52 PM ET

After a nail-biting team competition that ended with a Team USA gold medal, the 2026 Olympic figure skating medal rounds are finally here.

Four unique disciplines—ice dance, pairs, men's and women's—will crown four unique champions over one week of competition.

The medal rounds began with ice dance on Monday. Ice dance is a fascinating discipline that swaps out jumps for ballroom-inspired two-person choreography. Synchronized edge-based step sequences called "twizzles" and death-defying lifts gain the most points for ice dance duos, but charisma matters here, too: the best ice dancers skate routines fiery enough to go viral around the world. Just ask former Olympic champions Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, whose "Moulin Rouge" number made them global superstars in 2018.

The 90s are back

The Olympic ice dance competition forces duos to master two unique skates: a "rhythm" program in which every pair contributes a routine around a shared theme, and a free program with no creative limits.

The rhythm program has its roots in traditional dance, so it tends to follow ballroom themes like tangoes, foxtrots and waltzes. This year, though, the International Skating Union broke the mold and opted for a "1990s" theme instead. Skaters could choose any music from that decade, so long as it fit within a set beats-per-minute range, and the results of all that freedom were predictably wild.

The Georgian team of Diana Davis and Gleb Smolkin danced to The Offspring's "Pretty Fly for a White Guy" while sporting faux cargo pants; the British team of Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson danced to a Spice Girls medley in Union Jack and leopard print regalia. From Tom Jones to Will Smith to RuPaul, dozens of '90s artists were honored on the ice.

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That's what makes ice dance so much fun: it has the technical difficulty of other skating disciplines but the camp, costumes and hilarity of a two-man theater show.

A dead heat for first

For all the chaos of the '90s rhythm dance, though, the top two teams of the night opted for something a little more classy. French team Laurence Fournier-Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron opted for Madonna's "Vogue" while Americans Madison Chock and Evan Bates chose a Lenny Kravitz medley. The two teams finished in a dead heat: Fournier-Beaudry and Cizeron scored 90.18 points while Chock and Bates put up 89.72. That .46 point difference—the equivalent of one blade placement on the ice—was all that separated the two teams.

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It's a reversal from the teams competition a few days ago, where Chock and Bates wound up with a narrow advantage.

Fournier-Beaudry and Cizeron entered these Olympics as a brand-new pairing. Fournier-Beaudry previously skated for Canada with her partner Nikolaj Sorensen, but traded him—and her citizenship—after he was suspended from the sport following sexual assault allegations. She joined up with French skater Cizeron, a retired Olympic champion accused of controlling behavior by his former partner Gabriella Papadakis.

Fournier-Beaudry and Cizeron are remarkably talented skaters, but their pairing is a controversial one for these reasons. It's also a frustrating one for the rest of the ice dance field who worked hard for four years to prepare for these Games: Fournier-Beaudry and Cizeron announced their partnership out of nowhere this season and instantly became gold medal favorites.

Chock and Bates, meanwhile, have the opposite story. They've skated together through 15 years and four separate Olympic cycles. They took home a team gold in 2022 (and paired that up with a second one here in Milan a few days ago) but have never won an individual Olympic medal of any color. This is their last opportunity to do so: they're widely expected to retire at the end of the 2025-26 season.

The ice dance competition will conclude on Wednesday with the free dance.

Alyssa Clang

Alyssa is a Boston-born Californian with a passion for global sport. She can yell about misplaced soccer passes in five languages and rattle off the turns of Silverstone in her sleep. You can find her dormant Twitter account at @alyssaclang, but honestly, you’re probably better off finding her here

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