France's Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron are now ice dance world champions after a dominant performance at the World Figure Skating Championships in Prague. The French pair was clearly in the lead after the rhythm dance and crowned their first joint season with a record score of 230.81. Their winning margin of 19.29 points is the largest in World Championship history, securing their place at the top of the sport.
Canada's experienced Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier scored 211.52 points and won their third consecutive World silver medal. Americans Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik, competing in their first World Championships, finished third to claim the bronze medal position.
Right now it feels terrible and unfair. We put in a huge amount of work for this program in recent weeks.
Finland's Juulia Turkkila and Matthias Versluis withdrew from the free dance due to Versluis's back pain, ending their competition prematurely. Turkkila and Versluis were in an impressive 11th place after Friday's rhythm dance, relative to their starting position, before the injury forced their exit.
Britain's star pair Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson dropped from third place in the rhythm dance to fourth in an exceptionally bitter manner after a controversial judging decision. Fear and Gibson's scores were reviewed for a very long time until the judges gave the pair a very rare two-point deduction for an element that violated the rules. Fear and Gibson ultimately missed third place and a World bronze medal by 0.22 points.
This is sad. We went through this quickly with the judges, but we didn't get answers. For the sake of the whole sport, we hope this doesn't end here. We worked hard. We hope the judges' scores would be in line with the athletes' performances.
The sold-out arena in Prague booed loudly after seeing the British pair's scores and the point deduction. Former top judge and Yle commentator Mika Saarelainen understood the situation quickly but mentioned he had never seen anything like it. No official reason was given for the deduction.
Saarelainen immediately suspected the reason was a lift performed with apparently straight arms, which is prohibited in ice dance. Fear and Gibson spoke with the technical judging panel after the competition. The British figure skating association requested the situation be reviewed again to gain clarity on the matter. The rarity of the case is illustrated by the fact that the British association's representative did not even know the process themselves.
We wouldn't trade today's performance for anything. The audience's reaction and the feeling of success were exactly what we wanted.
The competition concluded with the last medals of the World Championships awarded in ice dance on Saturday evening. The twists in the ice dance medal race did not end with Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron's excellent free dance. At the press conference, the top three were still in the lead, with the British pair not appearing before the writing media at all but going around being interviewed by TV companies instead.