Ice dancers Gilles, Poirier lead Canadian Olympic figure skating team full of new faces

Following a slew of retirements, the Canadian Olympic figure skating team in Beijing will look much different than it did only four years ago.

Gone are ice dance legends Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, along with the pairs team of Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford, plus singles skaters Kaetlyn Osmond and Patrick Chan.

Those losses account for all four medals Canada earned at the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics in the sport.

Now, a younger generation of Canadian skaters look to take the first step in rebuilding the esteemed program.

The Olympic figure skating schedule begins with the team event on Thursday night (9 p.m. ET, CBCSports.ca, CBC Sports app, CBC Gem) and runs all the way through Feb. 19 when the pairs event wraps up.

WATCH | Meet the Canadian Olympic figure skating team:

In Beijing, Canada's best hope for a medal appears to be ice dancers Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, who are tasked with filling the awfully large skates left behind by Virtue and Moir.

The 30-year-olds placed eighth in their Olympic debut four years ago but have consistently grown in the quadrennial since, including a bronze medal at the 2021 worlds. Before the current Grand Prix season was cut due to COVID-19, Gilles and Poirier won the Skate Canada International and placed second at the Internationaux De France.

To achieve that goal, Gilles and Poirier must contend with heavy favourites and longtime Virtue and Moir rivals Gabriela Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron of France. Papadakis and Cizeron have won four world championships together, along with Olympic silver in 2018.

Russia's Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov and Americans Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue, who finished fourth in Pyeongchang, should also be in the mix.

WATCH | Gilles,