{"id":200235,"date":"2026-02-13T08:58:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T08:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/madison-chock-and-evan-bates-respond-to-judging-controversy-following-silver-medal-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T08:58:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T08:58:11","slug":"madison-chock-and-evan-bates-respond-to-judging-controversy-following-silver-medal-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/madison-chock-and-evan-bates-respond-to-judging-controversy-following-silver-medal-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Madison Chock and Evan Bates respond to judging controversy following silver medal – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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MILAN \u2014 Madison Chock and Evan Bates <\/a>put up their best individual performance in the Olympics<\/a> on Wednesday, coming away with a silver medal in figure skating\u2019s ice dance competition.
There was some controversy over their second-place finish, however, spotlighting the intricacies \u2014 and inconsistencies \u2014 of the sport\u2019s judging system.
In particular, the gap in scores for Chock and Bates from a French judge \u2014 who rated the winning team from France much higher \u2014 drew scrutiny after the event.
Follow along for live coverage.<\/strong><\/em><\/a>
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.
\u201cWe\u2019ve certainly gone through a roller coaster of emotions, especially in the last 24 hours,\u201d Chock said. \u201cAnd 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\u2019ve got a lot to be proud of.\u201d
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\u2019d 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.
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.
A spokesperson for the International Skating Union, the sport’s governing body, said, “It is normal for there to be a range of scores given by different judges in any panel and a number of mechanisms are used to mitigate these variations. The ISU has full confidence in the scores given and remains completely committed to fairness.”
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.
\u201cI feel like life is sometimes you can feel like you do everything right and it doesn\u2019t go your way, and that\u2019s life and that\u2019s sport,\u201d Bates said after the event. \u201cAnd it\u2019s a subjective sport. It\u2019s a judged sport.\u201d
To Bates\u2019 point about the sport\u2019s subjectivity, scoring gaps such as Wednesday\u2019s are not necessarily a new phenomenon. 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 \u2014 who previously skated for Denmark and Canada \u2014 as his new partner.
Beaudry was available after her previous teammate and current romantic partner, Nikolaj S\u00f8rensen, was suspended in 2024<\/a> for six years after accusations<\/a> of sexually assaulting an American figure skating coach and former skater in 2012. The suspension was overturned<\/a> 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<\/a>.
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.
\u201cThere\u2019s nothing more fulfilling than going out and performing your best and feeling like you have accomplished what you\u2019ve trained for your entire career,\u201d Chock said of her emotions after their final skate. \u201cTo have that Olympic medal and that Olympic moment and feel like we had really done it, [we] felt that victory to our bones.\u201d
The duo will now also have a chance to enjoy life after being laser-focused on their training.
\u201cWe 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\u2019t had coffee in, like, a month,\u201d Bates said. \u201cSo 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.\u201d
Rohan Nadkarni is a sports reporter for NBC News.\u00a0
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeMILAN \u2014 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\u2019s ice dance competition.There was some controversy over their second-place finish, however, spotlighting the intricacies \u2014 and inconsistencies \u2014 of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":200236,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-200235","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-us","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}