Chock and Bates say their near-perfect skate felt like a win, even if silver left fans 'confused'

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MILAN (AP) — U.S. ice dancers Madison Chock and Evan Bates didn’t conceal their disappointment Thursday at the bittersweet Olympic silver medal for what Bates called their “absolute best performance,” while Chock said the confusion over the result “does a disservice to our sport.”

During Wednesday night’s free dance at the Milan Cortina Olympics, French skaters Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron earned a season-best 225.82 points to win gold despite several mistakes by Cizeron, including a glaring one during a twizzle sequence.

Chock and Bates also delivered a season-best performance with a nearly perfect skate, finishing with 224.39 points.

Chock said skaters, coaches and fans deserved more clarity about the results.

“Any time the public is confused by results, it does a disservice to our sport,” Chock said. “I think it’s hard to retain fans when it’s difficult to understand what is happening on the ice. ... People need to understand what they’re cheering for and be able to feel confident in the sport that they’re supporting.”

This is the fourth Olympics for three-time reigning world champions, who have been skating together for 15 years and got married in 2024. They said they were still working out their future plans, including whether to defend their world title in Prague next month.

“TBD,” Chock said.

Bates said they hadn’t studied the scores, which included a French judge favoring the French skater by nearly eight points in the free dance, while five of the nine judges favored the American team. The other three that gave top marks to Beaudry and Cizeron did so by a slim margin.

“We did speak to our coach, and we did talk to each other, and we know how we felt on center ice after we skated,” he said. “We felt like we delivered our absolute best performance that we could have. It was our Olympic moment. It felt like a winning skate to us and that’s what we’re going to hold on to.”

Bates said fan support was “incredible,” and he noted an online petition calling on the International Skating Union and the International Olympic Committee to investigate the scoring.

“We haven’t actually seen it, we’ve just heard about it, but it means a lot that people are voicing their opinions on our behalf,” Bates said. “I think the way that we skated and the way we’ve approached chasing these goals hopefully has resonated with people at home, and even in our response I think hopefully that too can reflect the Olympic spirit.”

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AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics