“When I think about the totality of our career, I’m struck by what our coaches have done for us and the lifeline that they gave us five years ago,” Bates said, noting their move from Michigan to Montreal in 2018. They did earn an Olympic medal in the team event that will be gold or silver, pending the resolution of Russian Kamila Valiyeva‘s doping case. When the Shibutanis stepped away from competition in 2018, Hubbell and Donohue inherited the American throne.Ĭhock and Bates endured her ankle injury in the 2018 Olympic season (they were ninth at those Games, a nadir), her concussion after fainting on a walk on a hot Montreal day in 2020 and a fourth-place finish at last year’s Olympics, missing a medal by 3.25 points. The next season, Maia Shibutani and Alex Shibutani overtook Chock and Bates as the top U.S. But Papadakis and Cizeron relegated them to silver minutes later with a breakout performance. couple in the nation’s strongest figure skating discipline.įor years, it looked like their peak came at the 2015 World Championships, when they led after the short dance and then posted their best free dance score of the season. Perhaps no ice dancers, and few, if any, figure skaters since World War II worked this long and hard at the elite level to reach the top podium step.Įach was looking for a new partner in 2011 when they teamed up, a year after Bates placed 11th in his Olympic debut with Emily Samuelson.Īfter Davis and White stopped competing, Chock and Bates ascended as the next top U.S. couple to win an Olympic ice dance title.Ĭhock and Bates’ competitive future is uncertain, but they are committed to a summer 2024 wedding. Davis and White did it in 20, then in their final competition in 2014 became the first (and so far only) U.S. Americans Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue, the Olympic bronze medalists, retired.Ĭhock and Bates, the top returning couple from last season, became the oldest couple to win the ice dance at worlds or the Olympics.īirthdates are hard to come by for the earliest world champions from Great Britain in the 1950s - before ice dancing became an Olympic event in 1976 - but the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame confirmed many ages, as did Brit Paul Thomas, a 1956 gold medalist who now coaches in Canada.Ĭhock and Bates join their former training partners, Meryl Davis and Charlie White, as the lone Americans to win a world title in ice dance. Olympic silver medalists Viktoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov have been barred from competing since last March due to the blanket ban on Russians for the war in Ukraine. None have decided whether they will continue competing next season.įrench Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron, who won last year’s Olympic and world titles, skipped this season on an indefinite and possibly permanent break from competition. That little blip in the middle was so fast and so unexpected.”Īll of the medalists were in their 30s, a first for any figure skating discipline at worlds since World War II, in an event that included none of last year’s Olympic medalists. “We really persevered and showed a lot of grit, and, I think, maybe our performance today was a little reflection of that - perseverance and grit yet again. “We wouldn’t be sitting here today without many of those challenges that we faced, n ot just this season, but through all the many seasons of our career,” Chock said. Canadians Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier took bronze. couple to win.Ĭhock, 30, and Bates, 34, won worlds in Saitama, Japan, totaling 226.01 points between the rhythm dance and free dance for their first gold after three previous silver or bronze medals.ĭespite Chock’s fluke fall in the middle of Saturday’s free dance, they prevailed by 6.16 over Italians Charlène Guignard and Marco Fabbri. After 12 years and three Olympics together, Madison Chock and Evan Bates won their first world title in ice dance, becoming the oldest gold medalists in the event and the second U.S.
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