“Now I understand,
What you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free.
They would not listen. They did not know how.
Perhaps they’ll listen now.”
So Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, skating to these words this Olympic season, are setting forth “some “flaming flowers that brightly blaze” while skating to “Vincent” for the second time, paying homage to revered artist Vincent Van Gogh. (Nobody writes lyrics like that anymore. Bowing to Don McLean.)
“Vincent” was the routine that put Gilles and Poirier on the international map. They used it to great acclaim during the 2018-19 season. Seven years ago. They are not the same skaters they were seven years ago.
So in this Olympic year, they are skating to a version that goes beyond what they used to flirt with defeating Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje at the Canadian championships in 2019. (Gilles and Poirier won the free dance over them, a breakthrough.)
And they used it this past weekend to win their fifth Canadian title with national records and personal bests, numbers bursting wildly upwards in their final competition before the Olympic Games in Milan-Cortina.
They won the rhythm dance with the help of a saucy Ru Paul number and scored an explosive 93.11 points. Domestic, yes, but higher than their international personal best by about a point or so. (Dare we say it? Rivals Madison Chock and Evan Bates scored 91.70 for their RD at U.S. championships last week, too.)
Come the free dance and the last crowning moment of the national championships in Gatineau, Que., Gilles and Poirier put forth their best foot, with a yet again revamped “Vincent” unleashed.
Gilles, 33 and Poirier, 34, earned a boat load of level 4s: dance spin (2.57 GOE), one-foot turns (2.90). a curve lift (2.19), twizzles (4.18) and a choreo character step sequence (4.15).
(And in the RD, they earned the elusive level four for their pattern step sequence. They struggled to get a level 1 at the controversial Finlandia Trophy.)
Let’s take a special moment for their opening choreographic assisted jump, where Gilles slithers over Poirier from his backside to his frontside, and then goes back over top of him, the other way, front to back. GOE of 3.68. Smooth as silk.
The final combination lift? The team goes into a rotational lift, with Poirier supporting Gilles’ legs while she is draped over his back. That rotation goes one way. Then Poirier sinks to a lower level in his knees, lets go of her legs, Gilles drapes herself over his back, unassisted, with Poirier’s hands outstretched and they are ROTATING IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION to the first lift. Are you kidding me? Those got level four, with GOE of 4.66.
All nine judges gave Gilles and Poirier components of 10.00 across the board for presentation. Rarely seen. They also earned three scores of 10.00 for composition.
Gilles and Poirier received a Canadian record score of 137.94 for the free dance, and 231.05 for the gold.
(Dare we say it again? Chock and Bates got 137.17 for their free dance at their nationals, and 228.87 for the total.)
“I think we had unfinished business with this program,” Poirier said last week. “We never felt that we performed it to its full potential, and we felt, with the time that has passed and everything that we’ve learned with skating and about ourselves and how much we’ve grown as skaters, we wanted to see where we could take this program again, how we could re-imagine it. And that felt like an interesting prospect to us.”
While other international teams were out and about early in the season, getting mileage on their routines and feedback, too, Gilles and Poirier didn’t show up until Skate Canada in Saskatoon. What they unveiled were routines that were still raw and searching. They won, but some thought: “Was this really a good idea, to bring back an old program?”
The next time people saw “Vincent”, at Finlandia Trophy last November, it was seamless and mesmerizing. Vincent seemed to be speaking through them, putting shadows on the hills, catching the breeze and the winter chills.
It has come further since.
They were all emotional in the kiss and cry at the Canadian championships in Gatineau, Que., when their marks – that broke their own Canadian record from last year – fluttered up. Coach Juris Razguljevs wiped away tears. Razguljevs is never in tears. He got up from the seat, and bowed to Gilles and Poirier.
The marks? “We don’t really think about those things,” Poirier said. “The target is always moving and the points are always changing. We don’t give too much thought to those when we’re preparing. Of course, it’s really special. We’ve been skating for a long time. We’ve done so many national championships, I think it does speak to the mark that we’ve been able to leave on Canadian ice dancing as a whole, through our body of work.”
What was more important, he said, was the feeling that came from the performance. They felt free.
Their performance was a fresh relief from the judging storm in ice dance this season. Gilles spoke her piece, then buckled down to see what they could do. “We’re not really focusing on that anymore,” she said. “We’re just looking forward to a fresh start in this new year. There’s so much left for us to fight for and accomplish.”
The Grand Prix Final was clearly a disappointment and a frustration, finishing third in the RD, fourth in the free dance and only .06 points behind Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson in the race for the medals.
They did not go home and weep.
They took a week off, but it wasn’t much of a week off. Three days in, they met with their coach.
“It was nice to have that week off and reevaluate but the moment we got back on the ice, we tore everything apart,” Gilles said. “Everything. We were like: ‘What can we do?’ And it was actually quite fun and refreshing. Paul and I thrive in those moments because we love to create.”
They made new transitions, and tweaks and it brought them joy and happiness. “When we have more joy and happiness, we have more confidence,” Gilles said. “So I think coming into this event, it felt like it was fun work. But it didn’t take long. We were fired up.”
The team looked through all the protocols from all events and figured out what elements could be squeezed for more points. If the GOEs weren’t as high as they would have liked, they tried to figure out how they could increase them.
They particularly looked at the structure of their routines, particularly the free dance. In the middle of “Vincent” they changed the order between the twizzles in one of the transitions “just to create more emotional momentum going into the last piece,” Gilles said.
“I think it just gives us a lot more flow and a lot more energy for the second half of the program and really make those elements shine a lot more. That was the biggest structural upgrade we made.”
They made many small nuance changes, “just to tip everything over the edge, because that’s what it’s going to be about at this level,” Gilles said. “It’s all about minute details that make all the difference. We really don’t want to leave any stone unturned as we go into the Games.”
Indeed, they’ve put in a lot of work since the Grand Prix Final. There has been a lot of repetition, a lot of run-throughs. The work they have done has carried them through their programs.
By rights, Gilles and Poirier should be fighting for an Olympic gold medal, not begging for a bronze. In the past couple of seasons, they’ve proved their mettle. They won a Grand Prix Final in 2022 with their “Evita” routine. They had won the RD, .44 points ahead of Chock and Bates, and they won the free by 3.26 points over Chock and Bates. The gold was theirs with a 3.78 margin, over Chock and Bates. In the beaten field were Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri and Fear and Gibson.
They have won the Four Continents Championships twice. The first time, Chock and Bates were not there. The second time, in 2025, they were. It was a tight contest.
Gilles and Poirier won the RD by .53 points over Chock and Bates. Chock and Bates won the free dance by .48 over the Canadians. Overall, Gilles and Poirier won the gold medal by .53 points.
At the 2024 world championships in Montreal, Gilles and Poirier finished third in the RD, but won the free dance by 1.05 over Chock and Bates. Chock and Bates won the overall title by 2.52 points.
At the 2025 world championships in Boston, Chock and Bates swept both RD and free dance, winning by 5.51 points over Gilles and Poirier. In the free dance, Gilles and Poirier were behind only 1.78 points. This was the final world championship before the Milan Olympics.
But at the Canadian championships last week, Gilles and Poirier proved they were more than ready for their next task. “We just loved every moment of that program [Vincent[,” Gilles said. “It went by so fast, but I felt like every little fingertip, every little pointed toe felt like it was intentional. I think when you finish those programs, you just feel so special and honoured to be present in moments like that.”
Perhaps they’ll listen now.
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