“Faced with the smear campaign targeting me, I have chosen to entrust this matter to my lawyers.” Cizeron has issued a formal notice to Papadakis and her publisher
Guillaume Cizeron has issued a formal notice to Gabriella Papadakis and her publisher, disputing claims in her upcoming autobiography and denouncing what he calls a smear campaign.
original source: franceinfo.fe dd. 13th January 2026
Guillaume Cizeron announced on Tuesday, January 13, via a statement, that he has, through his lawyers, issued a formal notice to his former ice dance partner Gabriella Papadakis and her publisher. He denounces “false information” in the 30-year-old skater’s autobiography, which franceinfo: sport has read and which will be published on January 15. Here’s a translation of his comments posted in Franceinfo.
In his statement, Cizeron said, “I have chosen to entrust this matter to my lawyers and to formally request that all parties involved immediately cease the dissemination of defamatory statements against me, and I reserve the right to take any necessary legal action to protect my integrity.”
In her book, Gabriella Papadakis describes at length the deterioration of her relationship with her lifelong partner, whom she met in childhood. She portrays Guillaume Cizeron as a “controlling,” “demanding” partner, and speaks of a sense of “hold” or control. She claims that more than a year before their split, she told him of her intention “to file a complaint against one of her abusers” for the rapes she says she suffered. “He replied that if I did, he would no longer want to skate with me,” she writes.
A source close to Cizeron told Franceinfo Sport that the skater was deeply shocked upon reading this passage. “He was outraged, he was stunned,” the source said, describing a man “very saddened” by these statements. In the statement released Tuesday, the French skater asserts that his relationship with Papadakis was “based on equal collaboration both athletically and personally”: “Faced with the smear campaign targeting me, I want to express my incomprehension and disagreement with the labels attributed to me,” he writes. “I also denounce the content of the book ‘Pour ne pas disparaître,’ which contains false information, attributing to me statements I never made and which I consider serious.”
A “mise en demeure” is a formal notice or warning from one party to another, reminding them of their obligations and possible sanctions. This procedure comes before the filing of a lawsuit.
Related topics: Gabriella Papadakis, Guillaume Cizeron
Well, we’ll see, but it’s printed by one of the bigger French publishing houses and usually, those have legal departments that try to ensure their client is safe from lawsuits or at least able to put up a good defense. But I admit I don’t know enough about French defamation laws to say whether bringing a suit would be a good prospect for Guillaume. In any case, I think he’s in a bit of a between a rock and a hard place situation here. If he says nothing, the book makes him look bad in a sport that has judges, especially less than a month before the Olympics. If he does speak up, he automatically creates a Streisand effect, meaning even more people will now be aware of and possibly interested in the book.
No matter what, I surely would not have thought this pair would ever end up possibly suing each other after their career.
A *hit* dog not a hot dog LOL
Oh he definitely said what she’s saying. The fact that it’s one small part of her story and he’s calling it a smear campaign as if the whole book is about him tells us all we need to know. He’s making a bigger deal out of it and blowing it up because a hot dog will holler, and he sure is.
I’m sure if these claims were true, there would be more than one to testify to these allegations. As it, only Papadakis is making these claims, which makes them unfounded, and they remains false/unproven allegations at best, if not slander or defamation