Papadakis and Cizeron win Grand Prix Final

Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron of France won gold in Ice Dance at the 2017-18 Grand Prix Final of Figure Skating on Saturday. Canada's Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir took the silver, while USA's Maia Shibutani and Alex Shibutani pocketed the bronze.


It came down to component scores in the battle for first place between the French and the Canadians.

"This is also the first time for us to win the Grand Prix Final," noted Cizeron, "so it is one more thing off our list. It was not perfect yet; there are still some things that we can improve in both programs, technically, and also to make it more consistent."

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"Tessa and I, we are proud about what we did this week and it was a lot of fun at this competition," said Moir, adding that it was an honor to compete against and share ice with Papadakis and Cizeron. "Now it is important to be ready for the Olympic Games and we are pretty motivated. It was a pretty intense competition. We made a couple of mistakes, but overall, we are pleased with our week and we are stepping to a good direction."

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"We extremely happy with the result today," said Cappellini. "It was our season’s best. We skated the best we could. We made a step forward at this Grand Prix Final. I thought this was a good competition to do. Less to lose, and great preparation for the Olympics. We definitely want to keep improving for the points, and we will go home and will get prepared for the Olympics."

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What are your thoughts on the Ice Dance results at this event?

I'm not terribly surprised by the result. Though I prefer Virtue/Moir's free dance with their numerous choreographic changes, Papadakis/Cizeron are positioned to win Olympic gold.

If there's anything I find missing with Virtue/Moir's free is that while I'm getting a lot of drama and attack, I don't particularly get the same sense of romance that I felt with their free dance last year. I think that Papadakis/Cizeron, on the other hand, need to bring more dimension; as a few have pointed out, they tend to skate their free with the same tone and speed, even during the Presto section. But I get a sense that they aren't going to change the choreography since the judges are already giving them 10s.

The other point is that the international judges are still saying that Hubbell/Donohue are in step to be the top US team. The Shibs need to stay clean (what was happening with Maia's twizzles, I don't know) to hold them off because H/D would have won if they didn't have that glitch in their last rotational lift. And yes, we can't count out Chock and Bates because they have made major leaps in both their programs, and their Imagine free dance is much more believable.

My thoughts on the ice dance results:

1) Excellent technical panel. Mrs Higashino is known for being an excellent Technical Expert and it's important to mention it again.

2) The scoring judge panel was fine too, with one exception though: Leanna Caron should never be member of this panel! She should rather stick to her Skate Canada President job position plus there are so many great Canadian judges who could have been member of this GPF judge scoring panel.

3) During the live performances, according to the real time TES information, P/C and V/M got only one level3 only but one could easily see the final TES was slightly different from the one displayed at top left corner of our screens! According to the TES scores displayed at the end of their programs, V/M should have got around 120 pts and P/C around 122 pts. Did the tech Panel finally decide to be a bit more conservative to balance high GOEs and save some margin for improvement (in terms of score) at the Olympics? Well, that's my feeling.

4) Though the gap in terms of score between P/C and V/M, the battle for the OGM will be very exciting as nothing is done! Nothing! Tessa and Scott are not happy with their results hence we can rely on them to improve significantly their programs, no doubt! This silver medal is more likely a booster for them. As for Gabriella and Guillaume, they never give up. Be sure Guillaume already identified corrections to be fixed at their next trainings/competitions and they will significantly improve their programs too !

5) Competition at US Nat'l is expected to be quite tough, all three US couples getting almost the same overall score (all of them within less than 1 pt!). H/D are in a ramp up phase and the Ships are more in a ups and downs phase... Let's see. BTW, congrats to C/B who delivered one of their best FD this season.

6) C/L did quite a good job but their FD lacks a bit of punch but still, so happy to see them competing at GPF.

7) I really enjoyed all the real time TES information!

I thought Hubbell/Donohue should have won gold.