One of the biggest controversies of the 2026 Winter Olympics has been the scoring of the figure skating ice dance event, where French pair Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron defeated the heavy favorite, Team USA’s Madison Chock and Evan Bates.
That hasn’t been a popular result in the U.S., and Chock and Bates acknowledged the controversy on Thursday while speaking with USA Today. While they didn’t go as far as some of their fans, they did acknowledge this episode hasn’t been the best look for figure skating:
“Any time the public is confused by results, it does a disservice to our sport,” Chock said on Thursday.
“It’s hard to retain fans when it’s difficult to understand what is happening on the ice. I think there needs to be a lot more clarity for the skaters, for the coaches and for the audience, in order to just have a solid fan base moving forward. People need to understand what they’re cheering for and be able to feel confident in the sport that they’re supporting.”
At issue is a scoring system in which the majority of the judges favored the Americans, but gave the French the win.
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When reviewing the individual judges’ scores in the free dance, the French judge sticks out with their compatriots’ second highest score and the lowest score Chock and Bates received, with a delta of nearly eight points. By comparison, the American judge favored Chock and Bates by about four points.
Beaudry and Cizeron won by approximately a point and a half, despite some stumbles on the free dance some believed should have cost them enough points to land in silver territory. We’re talking about the kind of a result that creates slow-motion supercuts on Reddit.
Adding fuel to the fire is the fact Beaudry and Cizeron were already a controversial pair.
Madison Chock and Evan Bates finished a point and a half short of a gold medal. (Photo by Joe Scarnici/Getty Images)
(Joe Scarnici via Getty Images)
An online petition calling for an investigation has been circling among Chock/Bates fans, which Bates acknowledged but didn’t explicitly endorse:
“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.”
The International Skating Union has responded to the discourse as well, with a spokesperson issuing a statement to NBC News:
“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.”
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Together, Chock and Bates have won the last three ice dance world titles and hold a pair of Olympic gold medals as part of the U.S.’ wins in the team event in 2022 and 2026. They have been skating together since 2011 and married in 2024.
They declined to tell USA Today if they would go for a fourth straight world title in March, but said they “have plans to remain on the ice” for now.
