Milan – Canadian figure skaters Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier put the dark times behind them with ice dancing bronze at the Winter Olympics after it had looked as if their career could be over following her cancer diagnosis.
🇨🇦🥉CANADA BRONZE IN ICE DANCE🥉🇨🇦
Piper Gillies and Paul Poirier skate to third, delivering an outstanding performance with raw emotion after 15 years together.
A starry night in what may have been their last skate.
Canada’s first figure skating medal since 2018. pic.twitter.com/V4kRCBguCE
— Ben Steiner (@BenSteiner00) February 11, 2026
“If you can just get out of bed and keep believing in yourself and keep chasing your dreams, anything can happen.”
Gilles, wearing a bright blue costume that evokes Van Gogh’s “Irises”, and Poirier received huge cheers for their performance in their third Olympics.
France’s Guillaume Cizeron and Laurence Fournier Beaudry took gold with 225.82 points ahead of world champions Madison Chock and Evan Bates of the United States (224.39).
Four-time world medalists Gilles and Poirier achieved 217.74 pushing Italian couple Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri into fourth place.
piper and paul just won gold oh my god😭🩷🫶 the stream ended after this they were the last team congratulations to them on the gold medal and becoming olympic champions in ice dance🩷
pic.twitter.com/DmZkaVUZGV— soph hates figure skating (@pwdrianti) February 11, 2026
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Source: AFP
