Who will reign as Olympic ice dance champions? Here are 5 teams to watch

For its artistic flair and fast spinning twizzles, ice dance is one of the more stylistic figure skating events at the Olympic Games.

This year at Milano Cortina 2026, the podium for the ice dance event is a wide open competition with a tight race for gold, featuring long-time favourites, along with surprising and controversial competitors.

The final day of the ice dance event takes place on Wednesday at 1:30 p.m. ET, with the top 20 teams competing in the free dance event.

Here are five teams to watch:

The Canadians have long been known for their often quirky and unconventional style on the ice, from an Elton John inspired routine in 2022 to their fierce rhythm dance to RuPaul’s Supermodel at Milano Cortina 2026

The three-time Olympians have been skating together since 2011 and train out of Scarborough Ont, but they have yet to make an Olympic podium.

Now heading into what is likely their last Olympic Games, the reigning world silver medallists, sit in third place with a score of 86.18.

“We want to win the Olympics,” Poirier said in the new Netflix documentary, Glitter and Gold: Ice Dancing, released just before the start of the Winter Games.

“Paul and I look good in gold,” Gilles said.

Gilles and Poirier’s road to the Olympic podium has been rocky over the years. Gilles lost her mother to glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, just after their first Olympic Games in 2018.

Canadians Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier sit in 3rd place following the rhythm dance

In 2022, Gilles herself was diagnosed with Stage 1 ovarian cancer and underwent precautionary surgery. She has since been cancer free.

The pair had originally intended to retire after the Beijing 2022 Olympics, but then made the decision to return for