Pair set for new season of ice dancing
Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier were emotionally spent at the end of a Beijing Olympic season spent trying to dodge COVID-19.
“The stress of the Games really ate into our enjoyment, especially during the second half of last season,” Poirier said.
The strict rules last season around a positive COVID-19 test could have kept them in isolation ahead of the Games, or even missing the Games altogether.
“The biggest challenge was trying not to catch it leading up to the Games. It was very easy to be professionally paranoid,” Poirier said. “We felt especially isolated and on-edge. It really coloured our experience.”
And so the world ice dance bronze medallists, who open their season at this week's Skate Canada International, took a full six weeks off in the summer to recharge.
“We both felt excited about the possibility of skating and competing again, but neither of us knew definitely how we wanted to approach the season,” Poirier said. “What we ended up doing was simply showing up at the rink and skating because we didn't have a game plan.”
Gilles and Poirier, who are both 30, finished a heartbreaking seventh at the Beijing Olympics. A botched lift left Gilles a puddle of tears while they awaited their marks. They were fifth at the world championships a month later.
They spent their respective off-seasons visiting family and travelling, things they'd missed doing during the pandemic.
The struggle of the past two seasons was a big reason the ice dancers decided they weren't quite done with the sport. They're unsure whether they have another Olympic quadrennial in them however.
“We're taking it one year at a time, one month at a time at this point,” Gilles said.