At the Italian Grand Prix, third of the six stages of the prestigious Grand Prix circuit, Papadakis and Cizeron collected 87.45 points at the end of their rhythmic dance, in front of very sparse stands.

They were more than two and a half points ahead of Americans Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue (84.79), 2021 vice-world champions, and Russians Alexandra Stepanova and Ivan Bukin (81.47), quadruple European medalists.

The best score of this Olympic season so far was the 85.65 points obtained by Canadians Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier a week ago at Skate Canada, second of six stops on the Grand Prix circuit.

For Papadakis and Cizeron themselves, this is their highest score internationally since their return to competition at the end of September, after more than 600 days without.

The French Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron, quadruple world ice dance champions, during their rhythmic dance program, November 5, 2021 at the Italian Grand Prix in Turin Marco BERTORELLO AFP

"We changed the second music of the program, and the choreography a bit too, we worked with our choreographer to choreograph something new. I think it was (a program) very clean, we had a lot of fun doing it. working on it, we improved it a lot, "said Papadakis.

The 2018 Olympic vice-champions, quadruple world champions (2015, 2016, 2018 and 2019) and quintuple European champions (2015-2019) will skate their free dance on Saturday.

They will then head to Grenoble in two weeks, for their second Grand Prix of the winter, on November 19 and 20.

The Grand Prix final, which will serve as a dress rehearsal before the Beijing Games, is scheduled from December 9 to 13 in Osaka (Japan).

Papadakis and Cizeron, both 26, reappeared on the ice in early October after twenty months without competition, first for a national early-season event, then a week later for a secondary circuit competition.

They won both.

Before that, their last outing was in January 2020 at the European Championships, in Graz (Austria): they bowed there for the first time since the Olympics-2018, ahead of the Russians Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov, who have since become world champions in their absence last March.

© 2021 AFP