Madison Chock and Evan Bates are clearly in sync. (Published 2022) (2024)

With a whispery, lyrical performance, Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron of France won the ice dancing competition on Monday at the Beijing Olympics, skating with such flowing precision and unison that they appeared at times to be skating as a single person instead of a couple.

Performing a free dance to “Elegy,” music both somber and turbulent by the French composer Gabriel Fauré, Papadakis and Cizeron liberated a narrow defeat at the 2018 Games. The French couple won gold with 226.98 total points over Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov of Russia, who took silver with 220.51 points.

Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue of the United States took bronze with 218.02 points, one spot ahead of another American team, Madison Chock and Evan Bates. It was the fifth consecutive Olympics that an American couple has won a dance medal.

Having skated together for more than a decade, Papadakis, 26, and Guillaume, 27, have won four world championships, establishing a transporting harmony that has elevated ice dancing — often dismissed as frivolous and kitschy, with results that seem preordained — beyond sport into art. Jackie Wong, a prominent skating analyst from New York, has likened their performances to “music floating around the ice.”

Guillaume Cizeron has chosen an eye-catching black pants and very-tight-and-shiny red shirt combo. From afar he looks like he might have just stepped off the Starship Enterprise (in the very early days, before the guys started to look like they might want to find shirts that were a bit less snug).

Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov have taken the lead away from Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue, scoring 131.66 on their free dance to bring their total score to 220.51.

Like many of the men we have seen on the ice in Beijing, Nikita Katsalapov is wearing his top untucked, so it flares and flaps out a little in the breeze he creates as he skates. If you look closely, you can see quite a bit of chest hair peeking out from the deep V-neck in the shirt. It looks like the sort of tunic-y top you might wear while on vacation in Majorca (except that it is black).

Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue are now in the lead, scoring 130.89 in the free dance. Their strong showing in the rhythm dance on Saturday also helped put them in first place, for now. That means the American teams are currently in first and second, with two teams left.

Here’s another American couple in which the woman is named Madison. Is she dating Donohoe? She is not, although they have been competing together for more than a decade and were in fact a romantic item at one point.

The Americans are now assured at least a bronze medal. We’re down to pairs from the Russian Olympic Committee and France.

Update: Kamila Valieva stumbles in return, then floats to first place.

A large American contingent, including the men’s singles gold medalist Nathan Chen, is in the arena to cheer on the two American pairs in the final group. They’re seated just above the kiss and cry booth, and they let out a big cheer as Madison Chock and Evan Bates were given a score of 130.63, good enough for first place with three teams left.

Now it’s time to play the amusing guessing game of, Which of These Couples Is Actually Dating in Real Life? In the case of Chock and Bates, the answer is yes — they are a couple on and off the ice. That clearly makes them very comfortable together, and means that she probably approves of the clean white lines on his black top.

Alexandra Stepanova and Ivan Bukin of Russia were fifth heading into the free dance, but their score in this segment was lower than three other teams that have already performed. They slide into second place for now and are probably out of medal contention.

Bukin is channeling, if not a Disney Prince, then a Disney Prince Attendant, while Stepanova is a vision in peach. Her bold decision to wear all one color makes for a relaxing viewing experience, a change from the riotous patterns some of the skaters wear.

I’m fascinated by how the skaters decide whether or not to coordinate their outfits. Some of the pairs in the earlier groups appeared to have gotten dressed in whatever spangly thing they could find at the Spangly Clothing Store, never mind if it had anything to do with their partner’s color scheme. It’s a little disappointing, in the same Olympics in which an earlier pair dressed as the Joker and Harley Quinn, and one of the men dressed as Jesus Christ himself.

Britain’s Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson opened the second-to-last group with a “Lion King” medley, featuring “Circle of Life” and “He Lives in You.” (It is the best Disney movie and we will not tolerate any dissent on the matter.) From there, several teams vaulted into first place, but the top medal contenders remain in the final group.

At the 2018 Olympics, Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue were in third place after the rhythm dance. But in the free skate, Donohue put his hand to the ice during a twizzle maneuver, when the partners perform turns in sync as they move across the ice, during the closing moments of their routine. Technically, that counted as a fall and resulted in a one-point deduction. The couple slipped to fourth place, missing the medal podium, while the bronze went to their countrymen, Maia and Alex Shibutani, who are brother and sister.

The finish was devastating. But, after crying for two days, Hubbell said, she recovered and realized that she and Donohue had challenged for a medal and were among the best in the world. A month later, they won a silver medal at the 2018 world championships and have since collected two additional world medals and two United States titles.

Madison Chock and Evan Bates sit in fourth place, three points behind Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donahue. Both American couples train in the ice dancing hub of Montreal, as do the French champions Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron. Chock and Bates are the reigning American national champions, and both American couples helped the United States win a silver medal in the Olympic team competition in Beijing. Depending on the outcome of the Kamila Valieva case, it could be upgraded to gold.

Chock and Bates have won a total of three U.S. national titles. They are participating in their third consecutive Olympics as a team.

If you’re new here: Skaters perform in reverse order of their score in the rhythm dance, the first half of the competition held on Saturday in Beijing, which means the best performers and most likely medal winners will be the last to go. We have more than an hour left at this point, and much intrigue remains ahead.

One fun benefit of the reverse order is it gives everyone a shot at momentary glory. Six teams in a row learned they were in first place — even if it only lasts 10 minutes, it’s surely a fun thing to hear you’re in first place at the Olympics.

For most couples, a competitive Valentine’s Day might be trying to outdo each other with gifts.

But for Adrian Diaz of Spain and Madison Hubbell of the United States, who got engaged in April 2018, they’ll spend Valentine’s Day in a rather unusual way: Competing against each other in the Olympics.

Welcome to those of you joining us now that the Super Bowl is done. This is way better.

The crowd of a few hundred fans here in Beijing woke up for the Chinese team, Wang Shiyue and Liu Xinyu, and they delivered with a performance that had them leading the pack. But their lead lasted for only a few minutes, as the American duo of Kaitlin Hawayek and Jean-Luc Baker took the top spot after the next skate.

Neither team is considered much of a medal threat, with the top 10 teams still ahead, but they were nice moments nonetheless.