Madison Chock and Evan Bates have already won three world championships, but they had a lot of ground to cover at Wednesday’s free dance finals. Here’s how they did.
MILAN, Metropolitan City of Milan — For 15 seasons, American ice dancers Madison Chock and Evan Bates have swept competitions worldwide.
They’ve won three world championships and dominated the Grand Prix Final, but Olympic gold has been just out of reach since finishing fourth at the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022. That all changed on Wednesday, when the pair’s performance at the free dance finals finally secured their long-sought-after Olympic medal.
The odds were stacked against the couple heading into Wednesday’s finals. Former Team USA figure skater Adam Rippon, who won an Olympic bronze medal in 2018, said the pair needed to skate perfectly. They fell behind French dancers Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron during Monday’s rhythm dance competition, and Rippon said Chock and Bates had never beaten the French pair in the free dance.
That unfortunately didn’t change during Wednesday’s finals. Chock and Bates’ magnificent dance brought their total score to 224.39 points, just behind the French dancers’ personal best total score of 225.82.
Although they didn’t win gold, the silver medal is the first award Chock and Bates have won on the Olympic stage.
Other Team USA pairs also placed high at the finals. Skaters Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik scored 206.72 for fifth place, and duo Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko scored 197.62 for 11th place.
Chock and Bates were the favorites leading into Wednesday’s competition, as they arguably have the best free dance performance in the world. If it wasn’t for getting leveled down on their pattern step Monday night, they would have been the ones in the lead heading into the free skate.
“It’s really hard to analyze the performance so in depth,” Chock said after Monday’s performance. “We’re just going to bring the feeling we had at the end forward, and our coaches will figure that out when the time comes. But we’re really happy with how we performed.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.