Canadian ice dancers Gilles and Poirier ride a long road to another Olympics

Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier experienced the first real test of their partnership on a lonely stretch of Nebraska highway.

The newly formed ice dance team was halfway through a long drive to move Gilles’ belongings from Colorado to Toronto the summer before the 2011-12 season, when the trip hit a considerable snag on the prairies.

“We drove together for three, three-and-a-half days,” Poirier said. “And we had the car break down in the middle of the road trip.”

“We spent 12 hours at a dealership trying to fix my car, in the middle of Nebraska!” Gilles added.

Rather than panic, the teenage travellers patiently worked through the problem and got back on the road.

Fifteen years later — with multiple Olympic berths, world championship medals and Canadian titles in between — the decorated duo looks back on that moment as a reflection of their unshakable friendship and steady resolve.

“That’s the adventure of life,” Poirier said. “That’s what we’ve been on together, is just this long road trip of life, this journey where stuff happens and we make it work.

“We always unite and come together when shit hits the fan.”

Gilles said the potentially stressful sequence of events in the American heartland is a good representation of their career together.

“Whatever’s thrown our way, we’ve just overcome it,” she said. “Had a few laughs along the way, had a few cries along the way, and just embraced the journey.”

Their journey, as an ice dance team at least, is nearing the final destination. Gilles and Poirier will compete in a third Olympics together at the Milan Cortina Winter Games, aiming for their first medal on the sport’s biggest stage.

They won’t say it outright, but the 34-year-olds are, in all likelihood, headed for their last dance at Milano Ice Skating Arena. They’ll twizzle and step to the beat of RuPaul’s “Supermodel” in a 1990s-themed rhythm dance.

For the free dance, Gilles — in her Starry Night dress — and Poirier revived a reimagined version of Govardo’s cover of “Vincent,” a program they first skated in 2018-19. After years of trying to make a name in a field dominated by Canadian sweethearts Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, Poirier says it’s a routine that “put us on the map.”

Gilles and Poirier finished seventh at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, after which many in the figure skating world thought they would hang up their skates.

Instead, the Canadians returned with a deeper commitment to their unique, playful yet intricate skating style, producing the best competitive stretch of their careers, with a bronze and two silver medals at the world championships.

“We’ve been committed to the process of becoming the right partners for each other,” Poirier said. “There’s some sense of compatibility that you do need to have, but you also need to take intentional steps all the time, day in and day out, to grow into that best partner you can be for each other.

“That’s what’s allowed us to thrive and to have this incredible career together.”

They’ve also overcome challenges that had nothing to do with scores or standings. Gilles faced an ovarian cancer scare during the 2022-23 season, undergoing surgery to remove a tumour.

Years earlier, when she competed at the 2018 Olympics, her mother, Bonnie Gilles, wasn’t in the stands. Late-stage brain cancer kept her at home in Colorado Springs, watching her daughter’s Olympic debut on TV.

Through it all, Poirier was her rock.

“That was probably one of the toughest battles I’ve ever had to go through,” she said. “But he every single day met me at, what do you need? How can we approach training? How could we approach your life?

“Really showed me the type of relationship that we have and the friendship and the love, because he put my needs as a human first.”

This competitive season served up on-ice bumps that threw the pair off balance.

Gilles and Poirier entered the year expecting to challenge three-time reigning world champions Madison Chock and Evan Bates of the United States.

Then another gold-medal contender entered the field — the only months-old French team of Olympic champion Guillaume Cizeron and Laurence Fournier Beaudry, a Canadian now representing France.

Meanwhile, Gilles and Poirier have struggled to receive favourable marks, scoring well below their personal bests amid some controversial judging.

The Netflix docuseries “Glitter & Gold: Ice Dancing,” released Monday, captures Gilles’ frustration after she and Poirier finished just 0.06 points off the podium at the Grand Prix Final in December.

“I don’t want to go the rest of the year skating amazing like that and having no supporters,” Gilles said in the hallways of Aichi International Arena in Nagoya, Japan. “There’s so much work. It feels like it’s for nothing this year.”

Gilles later lit up the figure skating community on social media by publicly criticizing the International Skating Union, with her husband and dog’s Instagram accounts taking shots as well.

Since winning their fifth Canadian championship in early January, she says the judging drama is behind her.

“It’s in the past,” she said. “It’s a roller-coaster, and that’s what the journey is supposed to be about, and we’ve learned so many lessons from it.”

Lessons that include keeping their eyes on the ultimate prize.

Poirier said the setbacks have helped them focus their energy on finding where they can “squeeze” more points in their programs heading into the Games.

“We already knew going into the season that it was going to be really hard,” he said. “We understand how high the stakes are, and we understand that everybody’s going to be pushing.

“But I do think the Grand Prix season did give us the opportunity to learn a lot about where the programs can still grow … it’s all about those minute, minute details that make all the difference.”

And what if there isn’t a medal at the end of the road?

“I’m not putting that out in the universe,” Gilles said. “What we’re going to try to encapsulate at the Olympic Games is just creating our own moment. This is for us. This has been our journey.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 3, 2026.