Madison Chock and Evan Bates put up their best individual performance in the Olympics on Wednesday, coming away with a silver medal in figure skating’s ice dance competition.
There was some controversy over their second-place finish, however, spotlighting the intricacies — and inconsistencies — of the sport’s judging system.
In particular, the gap in scores for Chock and Bates from a French judge — who rated the winning team from France, much higher — drew scrutiny after the event.
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Asked by NBC News on Thursday how they felt about the judging, Chock and Bates exchanged glances and waited a beat before Chock answered in a measured tone.
Olympian Mariah Bell reacts to the ice dance final at the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics, where Team USA’s Madison Chock and Evan Bates secured the silver medal.
“We’ve certainly gone through a roller coaster of emotions, especially in the last 24 hours,” Chock said. “And I think what we will take away is how we felt right after our skates and how proud we were of what we accomplished and how we handled ourselves throughout the whole week. Putting out four great performances at the Olympic Games is no small feat, and we’ve got a lot to be proud of.”
So what happened exactly?
In the ice dance event, skaters perform two distinct routines across two days: the rhythm dance and the free dance. Chock and Bates entered as favorites after winning three straight World Championships in the same event, though they’d never finished higher than fourth in Olympic play.
On Monday, Chock and Bates finished second in rhythm dance to the French team of Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron. While Cizeron is a defending gold medalist in ice dance, he has only been paired with Beaudry for a year, and their partnership has generated controversy.
Olympian Mariah Bell reacts to the ice dance final at the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics, where Team USA’s Madison Chock and Evan Bates secured the silver medal.
In the rhythm dance, five judges rated the French pair with the best score, while three had Chock and Bates. The bigger issue was the discrepancy among certain judges.
Five of the six judges who rated Cizeron and Beaudry first still had Chock and Bates within 3.5 points. The sixth judge, from France, gave a total segment score to Cizeron and Beaudry, 5.74 points higher than Chock and Bates. Meanwhile, no judge who rated Chock and Bates first gave them an advantage larger than 4.61 points. Cizeron and Beaudry ultimately ended the rhythm dance portion 0.46 points ahead of Chock and Bates.
On Wednesday, five of the nine judges scored Chock and Bates first in the free dance. There were two scores that stood out, however.
A judge from Spain scored Chock and Bates third. Meanwhile, the French judge once again gave Cizeron and Beaudry a much higher score, rating them 7.71 points higher than Chock and Bates. None of the judges who scored Chock and Bates first gave them more than a 4.1-point advantage over Cizeron and Beaudry, including a judge from the United States.
Ultimately, Chock and Bates finished with a total segment score 0.97 points lower than Beaudry and Cizeron. And the American duo lost out on gold by 1.43 points.
“I feel like life is sometimes you can feel like you do everything right and it doesn’t go your way, and that’s life and that’s sport,” Bates said after the event. “And it’s a subjective sport. It’s a judged sport.”
To Bates’ point about the sport’s subjectivity, scoring gaps such as Wednesday’s are not necessarily a new phenomenon for the sport. Adding to the criticism over the scoring, though, was the controversy surrounding Cizeron and Beaudry.
Cizeron initially retired from the sport in 2024, but returned quickly in March 2025, with Beaudry — who previously skated for Denmark and Canada — as his new partner.
Beaudry was available after her previous teammate and current romantic partner, Nikolaj Sørensen, was suspended in 2024 for six years after accusations of sexually assaulting an American figure skating coach and former skater in 2012. The suspension was overturned in June. He was never criminally charged.
Cizeron, meanwhile, was accused of being controlling and demanding by his previous teammate, Gabriella Papadakis. Cizeron has denied the characterization and accused Papadakis of a smear campaign.
Chock and Bates have not discussed the off-ice circumstances surrounding their French rivals, and so far, have magnanimously accepted their second-place finish. For now, they seem content moving on from an Olympic cycle that pushed them to their limits.
“There’s nothing more fulfilling than going out and performing your best and feeling like you have accomplished what you’ve trained for your entire career,” Chock said of her emotions after their final skate. “To have that Olympic medal and that Olympic moment and feel like we had really done it, it felt that victory to our bones.”
The duo will now also have a chance to enjoy life after being laser-focused on their training.
“We have been so dialed in and preparing for these moments. And honestly, the first thing I did today was have a coffee, because I haven’t had coffee in like, a month,” Bates said. “So I think just going off the rails a little bit and having some junk food and staying up late is definitely what I want to do.”