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

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

It was the pairing’s best score to date, and it was needed to edge out Chock and Bates, the pair who won the U.S. its 12th medal at the Games thus far.

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

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

Chock and Bates were trailing the French couple by 0.46 of a point entering the free dance Wednesday night, and they were searching for their first ice dance Olympic medal with hopes that it would obviously be gold.

Their matador routine, dancing to a rendition of The Rolling Stones’ “Paint It, Black” drew cheers from the crowd, and they finished with tears in their eyes.

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

After a similarly brilliant routine, the judges decided the French duo did enough to defeat the Americans in the end.

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

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

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

Fournier Beaudry dealt with her own controversy last year, when she was with Canadian skater Nikolaj Sorensen in a personal and professional relationship. Sorensen was hit with a six-year suspension after a sexual assault allegation from 2012, though it involved an American skating coach, not Fournier Beaudry.

Fournier Beaudry was rushed into French citizenship last year to partner with Cizeron. They won four of their five major title events together, though their one second-place finish was to Chock and Bates at the International Skating Union Grand Prix Final.

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MILAN — After injuries and stumbles, Madison Chock and Evan Bates earned their first Olympic medal Friday, but it wasn’t expected to be this color.

The three-time world champions settled for silver in their fourth Olympics together, falling 1.43 points behind France’s Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron. Cizeron has won back-to-back Olympic titles with different partners after climbing the podium in Beijing with Gabriella Papadakis.

While Chock and Bates, who have skated together for 15 years and got married in 2024, Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron shot to the top of the sport after just 11 months together. When the winning score was announced, Cizeron hugged his coach and covered his face while crying. Chock and Bates, sitting next to the kiss-and-cry in white arm chairs reserved for the current leaders, clapped politely.

They wanted this gold medal as a perfect ending to their accomplished career.

The three-time world champions and seven-time U.S. champions were in their fourth Olympics together. Bates was competing on this stage for the fifth time. On a team with only one other athlete with previous Olympic experience — 20-year-old Alysa Liu skated in Beijing as a teenager — Chock and Bates became the unofficial parents to their younger teammates, including Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik, who finished fifth, and 11th-place finishers Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko.

Chock and Bates were the steadiest contributors of this year’s team gold medal run, winning both dance programs to win the second consecutive team Olympic championship for the United States, but struggled in previous individual Olympic events. In 2018, Chock suffered an ankle injury during the warm-up before the short dance. In 2022, she slipped and had an uncharacteristic fall.

But they haven’t missed a podium since that stumble. They were undefeated this season, placing first for both the rhythm and free dance portions of every competition. Until the individual Olympic short dance.

Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron, who paired together last year only after Fournier Beaudry’s longtime skating partner was suspended for sexual assault allegations, inched ahead by 0.46 points after Monday’s rhythm dance. It was a reversal from the team event, where Chock and Bates swept both the rhythm and free dance portions and led the qualifying round 91.06-89.98 over the French pair.

After the rhythm dance score for Chock and Bates flashed across the screen, her eyebrows shot up in surprise. Their coach Patrice Lauzon’s mouth dropped open. He furrowed his brow and cocked his head in confusion. While Chock and Bates smiled and waved to the crowd, Lauzon, who is also on the coaching team for Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron, looked on with suspicion.

Chock and Bates did their best to leave no doubt Wednesday. Their enthralling matador and bull program set to “Paint it Black” eclipsed the season’s best they earned two days prior during the team event, but it wasn’t enough to earn elusive individual Olympic gold.

American figure skater Amber Glenn fired back at critics on Tuesday following her gold medal victory in the team event at the Winter Olympics.

Glenn, who said she was taking a social media break because of “hate” comments after criticizing President Donald Trump’s administration, returned to TikTok with photos of herself and Alysa Liu. She directed her caption at those who apparently came after her.

“They hate to see two woke b—-es winning,” Glenn wrote. “If ‘Woke’ means people who use their platforms to advocate for marginalized communities in the country that they are actively representing …… Then yeah sure?”

Glenn ripped the Trump administration in a pre-Olympics press conference last week, saying it had been a “hard time” for her and members of the LGBT community. It was one of a handful of political remarks U.S. athletes made in the lead-up to the Winter Games.

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“It’s been a hard time for the (LGBTQ) community overall in this administration,” she said, via USA Today. “It isn’t the first time that we’ve had to come together as a community and try and fight for our human rights. And now especially, it’s not just affecting the queer community, but many other communities, and I think that we are able to support each other in a way that we didn’t have to before, and because of that, it’s made us a lot stronger.”

Glenn added that the issue she was talking about was something she wasn’t going to be quiet about.

The backlash online was enough for her to log off for a few days.

“When I chose to utilize one of the amazing things about the United States of America (Freedom of speech) to convey how I feel as an athlete competing for Team USA in a troubling time for many Americans, I am now receiving a scary amount of hate/threats for simply using my voice WHEN ASKED about how I feel,” she wrote in a since-expired post on her Instagram Stories.

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“I did anticipate this but I am disappointed by it. I will be limiting my time on social media for my own wellbeing for now but I will never stop using my voice for what I believe in.”

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