Madison Chock and Evan Bates win silver medal for Team USA in Olympic ice dance at Cortina Games in Milan

American figure skating pair Madison Chock and Evan Bates captured the silver medal at the 2026 Cortina Games in Milan, finishing with a total score of 224.39 after earning a score of 134.67 in their free dance on Wednesday night.

Chock and Bates, the married couple who have been skating together for more than a decade, were defeated by French couple Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron, who scored 135.64 in the free dance for a total of 225.82.

It was the pair’s best result to date, and it was needed to surpass Chock and Bates, the pair that earned the United States its 12th medal of the Games so far.

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Finishing in third place for the bronze medal was the emotional Canadian pair of Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, who were ecstatic to see their final score of 217.74 after a free dance result of 131.56 that put them in podium position.

A second American group consisting of Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik, making their Olympic debut, finished fifth with a total of 206.72 points.

Chock and Bates trailed the French pair by 0.46 points entering the free dance Wednesday night, and were going for their first Olympic ice dance medal hoping it would obviously be gold.

His matador routine, dancing to a rendition of the Rolling Stones’ “Paint It, Black,” drew applause from the crowd and ended in tears.

Chock and Bates are two-time team gold winners after Team USA’s victory on Sunday, but they had to watch one more routine to see if they could capture the gold when Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron took the ice.

After an equally brilliant routine, the judges decided that the French duo did enough to defeat the Americans in the end.

Cizeron won the ice dance title at the 2022 Beijing Games, although it was with his former partner, Gabriella Papadakis, with whom he also won five world titles.

Their separation, however, was filled with controversy, as Papadakis accused Cizeron of an “unbalanced” relationship, where she felt “under his control” in her memoir. She also claimed that he was “controlling” and “demanding.”

Cizeron called it a “smear campaign” and “false information,” and said he will take legal action against his partner with whom he had skated since they were children.

Fournier Beaudry addressed his own controversy last year, when he was in a personal and professional relationship with Canadian skater Nikolaj Sorensen. Sorensen received a six-year suspension following a 2012 sexual assault allegation, although it involved an American skating coach, not Fournier Beaudry.

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Fournier Beaudry quickly obtained French citizenship last year to partner with Cizeron. They won four of their five major title events together, although their only second-place finish was to Chock and Bates in the International Skating Union Grand Prix final.

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