ST. LOUIS — For more than a decade, the U.S. championships have become the playground of Madison Chock and Evan Bates.
It’s felt like the top step of the ice dance podium has had a sign that read “Reserved for Madison Chock and Evan Bates,” like Larry Bird showing up to the 1986 3-point contest and asking, “Who’s coming in second?”
At the 2026 U.S. figure skating championships on Saturday, they took their place on that very same top step, cementing themselves as the great American ice dance dynasty. It is their seventh national title, breaking a tie with Meryl Davis and Charlie White for most all-time.
‘The feeling that we got front he audience today was unlike anything I’ve ever felt before,’ Chock said after, tears welling in her eyes. ‘It felt so special, I felt so much love and joy and I’m so grateful for this moment to share with everyone here and to share with Evan. It’s been the most incredible, incredible career. Couldn’t have asked for anything more.’
In typical fashion, Chock and Bates set themselves up for success by rocking their short program. They earned a season-best score of 91.70 on Thursday, nearly six points ahead of Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik in second place, a comfortable margin for the pair.
The quality of their free dance program meant only a monumental mess would have left wiggle room for other competitors.
But their free skate felt more like a coronation than a competition. The “Paint it Black” program features Chock as a matadora and Bates as a bull, and they brought the intensity, highlighted by their step sequence that brought out the fairy Paso Doble influence that had the crowd in awe.
Ultimately, their free dance yielded a double-digit victory. Chock and Bates finished with a program score of 137.17 and a total score of 228.87, 15.22 points than the second place team of Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik.
‘I think our performance today was definitely the best that we’ve skated the free dance all year,’ Bates said. ‘It’s a great feeling going into a big event knowing that you’ve skated well at the previous competition.’
It’s pretty much a full circle moment for Chock. She recalled watching Davis and White, as well as Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto, growing up and idolizing them. Little did she know that she would one day surpass their records.
‘I really took that to heart and let it guide me and lead me,’ she said. ‘Hopefully we can leave a little bit of that legacy for the next generation and keep the love for the sport going.’
Here is the full picture of their excellence: This was their sixth championship in the last seven years; all of their titles have come in the past 12 years; they’ve competed in the past 15 U.S. championships; they’ve finished on the podium the last 14 times — and only one of those was a third-place finish.
However, when they were reminded of all the winning they had been doing at the U.S. Championships, Bates thought of how difficult it was to win their second title in 2020 after their first in 2015, how it wasn’t an easy ride to get to this point.
‘Those years where we felt the struggle set us up for this run now we’ve been enjoying for the last few years. The domestic rivalries that we had through that span of time sharpened us for international competition,’ he said.
All that’s missing from their decorated career is that Olympic medal. At the 2026 Milano Cortina Games, they will be determined to come out on top at their fourth Olympics.
‘We know what to do,’ Chock said. ‘We have our plan. We’re executing it, and we don’t plan on deviating from it. We’re going to stick to it, trust ourselves, trust our team, and do what we know how to do.’
