Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier of Canada perform in Ice Dance Rhythm Dance during the figure skating ISU Grand Prix competition in Helsinki, Finland, on Nov. 21, 2025.Heikki Saukkomaa/The Associated Press
Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, Canada’s best chance for a medal in ice dance this Winter Olympics, understandably don’t have a huge amount of time for TV right now.
But it’s still a testament to the team’s willpower that they have resisted watching screeners of Glitter & Gold: Ice Dancing – the highly entertaining twizzle-and-twist-filled three-part docuseries about them out on Netflix Feb. 1.
The Canadian ice dancers say they will wait until after Milano Cortina to check how they were portrayed by Katie Walsh, who previously directed Simone Biles Rising.
Meet the Canadians in charge of maintaining Olympic-quality ice in Milan
“We have utmost faith in the team,” Poirier says in a video interview with The Globe and Mail.
“What they did with Simone Biles was so inspiring – to be able to see her story as a fly on the wall, the ins and outs of what it takes to be a champion,” adds Gilles.
In the current blizzard of bland pre-Olympics sports docs, Glitter & Gold certainly stands out for its rich and rounded portrayals of its athlete-artists – and for its flair for finding the dramatic in everything from judging standards to costume-skirt length.
This show probably won’t end up being talked about as much as Heated Rivalry – which, for the record, Gilles has yet to catch, but Poirier watched and feels proud of as a Canadian – but I suspect it will be nearly as hot as far as skating-based streaming properties go.
The first episode starts as a chronicle of two teams competing on the Grand Prix circuit in one pre-Olympics ice dance season: Madison Chock and Evan Bates, the married couple and perceived frontrunners who represent the United States of America, and Gilles and Poirier, the self-described “campy” Canadians most likely to rally and beat them to gold in 2026.
But a month after filming was under way, a genuinely surprising narrative salchow emerged: Reigning France gold medalist Guillaume Cizeron announced he was coming out of retirement with a new partner.
That is none other than Laurence Fournier Beaudry, a Québecoise skater who competed at the Winter Olympics for Canada in 2022.
The Glitter & Gold documentary crew pivoted quickly to include them in the series – helped by the fact that they were training in Montreal alongside Chock and Bates. (Gilles and Poirier train Scarborough, Ont.)
The addition of Fournier Beaudry as a main character ups the stakes on multiple fronts.
She used to skate with her boyfriend Nikolaj Sørensen – but that was no longer possible after he was given a six-year suspension from the sport for “sexual maltreatment” in 2024. (The ban was overturned last summer on jurisdictional grounds.)
Partnering with Cizeron – currently mired in an off-screen feud with his ex-partner – allows Fournier Beaudry a last chance to pursue the Olympic dreams she says were unfair collateral damage of Sorensen’s discipline.
There’s also an added ticking clock for the Quebec figure skater to obtain French citizenship to allow her to compete in the Olympics. (On the Grand Prix circuit, only one partner needs to be resident in the country represented.)
Gilles and Poirier compete in the ice dance's free dance segment at the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating Final in Nagoya, Japan, on Dec. 6, 2025.Hiro Komae/The Associated Press
The shifting allegiance of ice-dance competitors is a fascinating subplot in Glitter & Gold – and complicates the Canada/U.S. showdown initially teased.
As retired American figure skater Adam Rippon (a lively talking head, as is Canadian champion Scott Moir) explains: “If you look at the top 10 teams in the world, more than half have a skater who’s represented more than one country.”
It’s men who are least in supply and so most in demand. Indeed, one small revelation in Glitter & Gold is that Chock once attempted to hook up as a partner with Poirier – but didn’t end up skating for Canada, she says, due to an e-mail mix-up.
Poirier isn’t so sure that there’s an alternative universe where the two pair up, however. “When Piper and I did our tryout, we knew that this was the right fit for us,” he says of what has become a 15-year partnership.
What is your favourite Winter Olympics memory? Share your story with The Globe
Gilles, who’s from in the United States, became a Canadian in 2013 – and fully committed to the country. She, diplomatically, describes that as the exception rather than the rule: “I moved here. I live here. I married a Canadian. My whole life is here and that’s very unique.” (Poirier, meanwhile, got engaged to his long-time boyfriend last summer – something omitted from the doc, which focuses more on the women.)
While – spoiler alert – Gilles and Poirier come out looking more like underdogs competitively than they did going into the season, Glitter & Gold captures them as artist-athletes with integrity who value expressing their true selves over hardware.
You’ll find it impossible to watch them perform their free-dance routine Starry Starry Night at the Olympics without tearing up, once you know its moving backstory and the reasons for its recent resurrection.
“We like to always say that we’re people first and athletes second,” says Gilles. That’s communicated loud and clear in this doc; her and Poirier’s trust in the team was not misplaced – as they’ll discover when they finally watch.