South Bay's Madison Chock And Husband Win Silver Medal In Olympics Ice Dancing Upset

SOUTH BAY, CA -- Redondo Beach native Madison Chock and her husband, Evan Bates, won the silver medal in the ice dancing competition at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy Wednesday.

The couple, who have been a skating pair for 15 years and have been married since June, 2024, brought home a final combined score of 224.3. France’s Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron claimed gold with a score of 225.82, while Canada’s Piper Gilles and Paul Poirer took bronze with a score of 217.74.

Chock and Bates are the reigning and three-time World and Grand Prix Final champions, as well as the reigning and seven-time U.S. champions; however, this is their first time medaling at the Olympics, according to Yahoo Sports.

Chock and Bates finished with 224.39 and a bittersweet silver medal after having lost just four times in the four years since they finished fourth at the Beijing Games.

Their second-place finish was somewhat controversial.

Cizeron made several mistakes, including a glaring one during his twizzle sequence, while Chock and Bates were nearly perfect. Yet the French judge favored the French skaters 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 Guillaume and Cizeron did so by a slim margin.

“I feel like in life, sometimes you can feel like you do everything right and it doesn't go your way, and that's life in sports,” said Bates, who along with Chock won a second straight gold medal in the team event earlier in the Winter Games. “It's a subjective sport. It is a judged sport. But I think one fact that is indisputable is that we delivered our best. We skated our best.”

The Canadian team of Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier earned the bronze medal with 217.74 points, pulling away from the Italian team of Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri and the British duo of Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson with a deeply emotional free skate.

“I usually prefer Guillaume and Laurence,” Fabbri said, speaking candidly following the medal ceremony. “But today, in my opinion, they didn’t skate so well. So I think Madison and Evan would have deserved to win.”

Chock and Bates skated to an orchestral version of “Paint it Black” from the dystopian sci-fi show “Westworld.” They turned in the kind of program that they have spent the last 15 years together working toward. Every movement seemed to be in perfect harmony, and the flamenco-styled choreography had the crowd clapping along with them.

The only question left was whether the husband-wife team had done enough to earn the one medal that has eluded them.

It looked as if Beaudry and Cizeron gave them an opening with a bobble on their twizzles. But they soon settled into their program, set to the soundtrack from “The Whale,” and moved as if they were under water with a marvelous degree of refined elegance.

As their winning score was read, Chock and Bates joined the crowd inside the Milano Ice Skating Arena in applauding them.

Then, an hour later, Chock was fighting back tears in a tunnel far from the ice.

“It's definitely a bittersweet feeling at the moment,” she said. “We have had the most incredible year — fifteen years on the ice together. First Olympics as a married couple. And we delivered four of our best performances this week. I think we're really proud of how we handled ourselves here and what we accomplished.”

Click here to see their medal-winning performance.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.