Olympic ice dancing gold medallist Guillaume Cizeron is accusing his former partner of engaging in a smear campaign against him through the release of her new memoir. Gabriella Papadakis released her memoir, Pour ne pas disparaître (So as Not to Disappear), on Thursday, January 15. In it, she accuses Cizeron, 31, of being "controlling, demanding, critical" during their time as partners. She added that eventually she refused to skate with him without a coach present and often felt she was "under his grip." During Papadakis' time working with Cizeron, she allegedly experienced "disputes, permanent fear, health problems, the feeling of [being under] a certain form of control." Cizeron defended himself in a statement shared with French media, saying, "In the face of this smear campaign, I want to express my incomprehension and disagreement with the labels attributed to me." All the Highs and Lows from the Wild 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris "The book contains false information, including statements I never made, which I consider serious," he continued. "For more than 20 years, I have shown deep respect for Gabriella Papadakis, despite the gradual erosion of our bond, our relationship was built on equal collaboration and marked by success and mutual support." Cizeron added that he has instructed his lawyers to "put all parties involved on notice to immediately cease the dissemination of defamatory statements about me." Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron Photo by Pascal GUYOT / AFP via Getty Images Cizeron and Papadakis, 30, were childhood partners, skating with each other until 2024. They were Olympic gold medalists in 2022 and won silver at the Winter Games in 2018 while skating for Team France. They also won five World Championship gold medals between 2015 and 2022. "In public, we seem like best friends," Papadakis explains in the book, according to a translation. "We joke around, we laugh until we cry. However, while a certain complicity remains between us, it vanishes as soon as no one is around to observe it." The accusations come as Cizeron is preparing to skate in the 2026 Winter Olympics alongside new partner Laurence Fournier Beaudry. Ice dancing is set to begin on February 6, the same day as the opening ceremony in Milan. Simone Biles and MyKayla Skinner's History Explained Papadakis, for her part, has since retired from competing but continued to cover the sport for NBC. When rumors surfaced in 2025 that Papadakis left competitive skating to focus on doing shows instead, she clarified, writing via Instagram, "That's not what happened. I stopped because the environment I was working in had become deeply unhealthy. I was exhausted, physically and psychologically, and I had to leave to protect myself. I had no choice." In addition to detailing her alleged relationship with Cizeron, Papadakis goes into detail about her early life in her memoir, which she says included instances of sexual abuse. She also takes aim at the culture around ice dancing, explaining that because it is designed for the man to lead and the woman to follow, men hold power in the sport. "I'm not suffering because I was sexually abused when I was younger, but because I continue, day after day, to find myself in situations where my body doesn't belong to me," she writes. "I'm there without really being there, half-inhabiting this body that mechanically performs the actions it's ordered to do."