Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri: The Italian ice dance couple who skate, cook, and win together

Many couples measure their relationship milestones in anniversaries, trips abroad, pets, or house moves. Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri have all of the above as well as a box of figure skating medals.

Two medals from the world championships, four from the European championships, and more than 10 from the Grand Prix series to be precise. Not a bad haul, although you won't find any evidence of these accolades in their shared apartment.

The ice dance partners, who have also been a real-life couple for 15 years, have fine-tuned a perfect balance between their athletic and personal lives and still look at each other with admiration when they skate out for their programs together.

"Since we are a couple in life, it's a way to share literally everything, all the emotion," Fabbri said. "It would be still very nice, of course, to achieve what we achieved separately. But since we achieved what we achieved together, it's even better because you are sharing very strong feelings and very strong emotions with the person you love, with the person you've decided to spend your life with. It's special for sure."

With the next Winter Olympic Games coming to their hometown Milan, this tight bond could be just the thing that helps Guignard and Fabbri make a medal breakthrough on their fourth try. The two-time reigning European champions spoke to Olympics.com about the differences in their on and off-ice relationships and why it was not an easy decision to continue until Milano Cortina 2026.

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Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri: Partners on and off the ice

Guignard and Fabbri first competed together during the 2010-11 season with Guignard moving from her native France to Italy to make the partnership work.

Since then, the pair have gone to three Olympic Games and won a plethora of medals, including silver and bronze at the two most recent ISU World Figure Skating Championships editions.

While there is no shortage of success in their careers as athletes, Guignard and Fabbri's apartment in Milan is conspicuously bare of any photographs of ice rinks, skates, or competitions. All that could remind them of their skating life is left behind once the couple step through the threshold of their home. What they find here instead is a chubby pet chinchilla, a well-stocked kitchen, and a pile of cosy sweaters.

"We are keeping the medals in a special box. But no, there's nothing about figure skating in our apartment," Fabbri said. "We have no pictures. We don't want to see everything about our career in our apartment because I think it's also important to separate the figure skating and the private life. And this is probably the secret why we are still here and we are still fighting and we are still together."

The on and off-ice differences are also evident in the personalities Guignard and Fabbri bring to those worlds. On ice, they are serious, skating drills, practising lifts, and honing their choreography. Off ice, they are smiling and joking as they criss-cross the world from Machu Picchu to Vietnam, go kayaking and cycling together, and adventurously dash into saunas above the Arctic Circle.

"It's a different type of relationship because on the ice, it's like more a kind of a job, so we have to be more serious," Fabbri said. "We have less time to be funny or to enjoy every moment while, when we get off the ice, another life starts. And so we try to enjoy life, to enjoy every moment. Even the fact of just eating together, cooking something together or going to the cinema together. It's completely different, of course. We can say that we have a two-sided relationship."

Making decisions together: "We don't fight for the music choice"

While Guignard and Fabbri try to keep their sports and personal worlds separate, there are moments when they do overlap – sometimes to the benefit of their sporting careers. Given how well the duo know each other, they can easily agree on each season's programs, from the music choices to their costumes.

It helps that the two skaters share a flair for the theatrical. Their programs in recent seasons have stood out for their unconventional themes, notably their current free program in which they mimic robot movements in metallic-like bodysuits.

"We pretty much always agree on the decision," Guignard said. "Every year we try to change a lot, especially for the free dance. Every year we want to present something new, so we already know what the other wants also because if we have a very emotional program, maybe the year after we want more strong or more fun program."

"Every year at the end of the season, we already know basically what we are looking for," Fabbri agreed. "So usually we agree and we don't fight for the music choice."

Another thing that the ice dancers readily agree on is that repetitive technical training is not something that fills them with joy.

"It's not fun!" Fabbri said with a laugh and Guignard quickly joined in. "It's fun the process of finding new elements, for sure, so May and June are hard but fun months at the same time. But during the season I can't say that it's really fun, the repetition of every element. It's just something that we know we have to do."

"It's a lot of sacrifice," Guignard said of the less glamorous sides of life as a competitive skater. "All skaters start very, very young, figure skating, so it's a lifestyle and not every day is easy. You have to be passionate and very strong mentally and physically. We did very good work all the year to be here now in this position."

Guignard and Fabbri's thorny rise to the top

Guignard and Fabbri’s passion and mental resilience has paid off big in recent seasons. The duo has not missed a podium at any of their Grand Prix assignments since winning their first medals in the series in 2018. They have also climbed the podium at the last two editions of the world championships and European champs too.

In 2023, they became the first Italian ice dancers to win a European title and world medal in nine years.

But while Guignard and Fabbri are now regularly among the top three in the world, it was far from an easy climb to get there. Aside from Challenger Series events, it took nine seasons together until the couple started winning their first major medals. And that long wait has made the medals they are winning now even more meaningful.

"If we compare our career to the careers of other skaters who achieved these goals earlier in their career, that really means a lot to us because it means that we worked a lot and we were doing the right thing," Fabbri said. "So these medals somehow pay us back for all the efforts and for many years of sacrifices."

The only major competition in which Guignard and Fabbri have yet to collect a medal from is the Olympic Games. The three-time Olympians have come close twice, finishing fourth in the team event at Sochi 2014 and fifth in ice dance at Beijing 2022.

The Olympic medals have proven elusive not only for the ice dance pair but for Italian figure skaters in general. Italy has won a total of two Olympic medals in figure skating, both bronze: Carolina Kostner in women’s singles in 2014, and Barbara Fusar-Poli in ice dance at Salt Lake City 2002.

Switching to coaching after her retirement, Fusar-Poli took on Guignard and Fabbri as her students and has coached the duo from the start of their partnership. As Guignard and Fabbri expanded their skill set and became more confident, the role of their coach evolved as well.

"Our relationship with Barbara changed a lot during our career because at the beginning we are just little soldiers. 'OK. Yes, Yes. Yes. Yes'," Guignard said. "And now it's teamwork. It's a more mature relationship between us. She was with us for 15 years and she always found the right word or the motivation. Sometimes we don't have a lot of motivation because not every day is very (great). We like a lot to work with her."

Milan ice dancers en route to Milano Cortina 2026

One of the most memorable moments in Fusar-Poli’s career was her return to the ice with partner Maurizio Margaglio during the 2005-06 season. It came after a three-year hiatus from competition and had one objective – to qualify and win medals at the home 2006 Olympic Games in Torino. The duo ultimately finished sixth.

While Guignard and Fabbri share Fusar-Poli’s competitive fire, they were not as enthusiastic to take the plunge for the sake of a home Olympic Games as their coach. Although the 2026 Games are coming to their hometown – the duo train in Milan and Fabbri was born in the city – it was far from a simple decision to embark on another Olympic cycle.

They waited until the end of the 2023-24 season to decide whether to continue or not.

"We didn't just want to continue until Milano Cortina just to be there. We have already taken part in three different Olympic Games. I know the next Olympic Games will be in Italy and so in our country, but just being there because it's a competition, it's an Olympic Games in Italy, it was not very important for us. The next Olympic Games, we really want to fight for a medal," Fabri said.

"During the last Olympic Games in Beijing, we made another step in the process of becoming more mature, so I think that we will be even more mature at the next Olympic Games and we will have the mindset to really fight for a medal that time."