After finally winning their elusive world championship, nobody would have faulted American ice dancers Madison Chock and Evan Bates from following the rest of the U.S. figure skating team from the Beijing Olympics into retirement.
The problem with that? They might never have had the chance to stand on an Olympic podium.
Chock and Bates helped the U.S. win the team silver medal at the Winter Games, but they have yet to receive a medal of any color - or podium recognition - because of a Russian doping investigation that continues to drag on. The team from Russia won gold, but it could be stripped because of a positive test involving Kamila Valieva taken before the Olympics began.
After a slow-moving and secretive Russian anti-doping tribunal ruled in January that Valieva, as an underage minor, was not at fault and should not be disqualified, the World Anti-Doping Agency and the International Skating Union challenged the decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The closed-door hearings were supposed to conclude last month, but the highest court in sports adjourned the appeal and said it would resume on Nov. 9 with two more days of hearings.
By that point, Chock and Bates will have started the new season with Skate America this weekend in Frisco, Texas.
“It’s really frustrating,” Bates said. “I think the time that has passed since Beijing - what are we, 20 months now? - I think that part of it is the most disappointing. We’re the only ones from that team that are still competing. It just represents the brief span of an Olympic athlete’s career, and to have this amount of delay in having our Olympic achievement recognized is frustrating.”
PHOTOS: American ice dancers Chock and Bates, still without Olympic medal, embark on new season
Bates explained that part of his Olympic dream was not only to compete at the Winter Games, and win a medal, but to stand on the podium and actually receive it. That moment was taken away from Bates and his longtime ice dance partner in Beijing.
“This was never part of the dream,” he said. “This was never what we envisioned.”
Assuming that CAS finally renders a decision, it is possible a ceremony could be held during next year’s Paris Olympics, which Chock called “the ideal scenario,” or during the 2026 Winter Games in Milan-Cortina. But even that would not make up entirely for having missed out on the euphoric moment of standing atop the podium after winning an Olympic medal.
And that was part of the discussion that Chock and Bates had when they decided to hold off on retirement.
“It would be hard to walk away knowing that, despite having achieved the hard part of winning an Olympic medal, we didn’t have the moment on the podium,” Bates said. “You see so many montages, whether it’s Michael Phelps or whoever it is having that emotional moment. To me, that’s baked into the Olympic dream. That’s the culmination. It’s not a delayed gratification thing where you have your Olympic triumph and then you have your moment on the podium. We talked about still wanting that.”
That was part of the reason Chock and Bates pressed on. Another part is the fact that they are at the top of their game, finally winning the world championship in March after a silver and two bronze medals over a decade of skating together.
Then they upped the ante by setting world records for the rhythm dance, team dance and total score at the World Team Trophy.
“After evaluating things,” Chock said, “we were really still very much inspired to keep creating, and exploring the potential we still feel we have. And it was a really interesting season last year, and we had a lot of fun and we learned a ton, so we felt like we still have more to give, and more that we want to learn. So we decided to take the opportunity to continue skating.”
Chock and Bates will be back on the ice at Skate America beginning Friday night. It’s the first of the six grand prix events leading up to the Grand Prix Final, which in turn should help identify some of the favorites for the next Winter Games.
Ilia Malinin is one of them.
The 18-year-old American wunderkind used his title at Skate America last fall as a springboard to a groundbreaking year at the senior level, which included becoming the first skater ever to land the quadruple axel in competition. Malinin went on to finish third at the Grand Prix Final and the world championships, where he was in second place after his short program.
“I’m very excited to start the Grand Prix series off. This summer has been long for me,” Malinin said. “I’ve been doing shows and traveling, and I’m glad to finally be competing again.”
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