The Winter Olympics are what some people call “rich people sports.” Some of the most popular sports in this category are figure skating and ice dance. Figure skating is an ice sport where either a pair or a single skater performs a series of jumps, spins, and more to music for a score. Ice dance is a type of figure skating that is more of a ballroom dance on ice and focuses on rhythmic footwork.
Figure skating and ice dance are some of the most-watched sports in the Winter Olympics because they are not hard to follow and are very captivating. One of the biggest highlights is the French ice dance duo. On February 11, the French duo Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron took the rink by storm with their interesting program. Some may argue that it was good, but most noticed that some of their moves were missing a big component: synchronization.
This should have made the duo lose points, but they did not. When looking at the scores, French judge Jezabel Dabouis had scored the French duo higher than any other judge, and scored the American duo Madison Chock and Evan Bates lower than the rest of the judges. Despite the uproar this caused, the French duo were still awarded gold and won with 225.82 points–just 1.43 more points than the Americans.
This, per usual, began trending on social media. They were nicknamed “the evil French duo,” especially as people began to look into their past. People found out that Fournier Beaudry is dating Nikolaj Sørensen, a skater accused of sexual assault. And Cizeron has accusations of being horrible to his ex-skating partner, so much so that she had to quit.
CHS sophomore and figure skater Skye Varanont followed this news.
“I’m not surprised that this has happened because the ISU (International Skating Union) has had a history with overscoring and underscoring certain countries,” Varanont said. “I’m not surprised because the Olympics are low-key corrupt.”
At the end of the day no team does not deserve the gold but the Olympics and the ISU need to work harder to make sure over and under scoring does not happen.
