It was a golden day for the U.S. figure skating team at Skate America on Sunday.
It bodes well for more gold at the Milan Cortina Olympics in February.
Madison Chock and Evan Bates won a record-tying fifth ice dance title at their home Grand Prix event, while world champion Alysa Liu captured her first title on skating’s premier series with a free skate that vaulted her from second place into first.
Chock and Bates, the three-time reigning world champs, showed exactly why they will be favored to win gold at the Winter Games in less than three months. They won the rhythm dance, then pulled away with their free dance choreographed to a version of the Rolling Stones hit “Paint It Black” from the dystopian sci-fi western series “Westworld,” finishing with a score of 212.58 points.
Marjorie Lajoie and Zachary Lagha of Canada were second with 197.16 points. Evgeniia Lopareva and Geoffrey Brissaud of France were third with 192.61 points, while the U.S. team of Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko finished in fifth.
“Every opportunity we have to compete lends us a new insight and new things to take away,” Chock said, “and this is no different. We are certainly going to take away the good things and good feelings from this performance.”
Chock and Bates were sharper than they were in winning the Cup of China last month in a program that seemed to mesmerize an appreciative crowd in Lake Placid, New York. Chock and Bates have become known for their creative storytelling, and the flamenco-style program they’ve designed for the Olympics is no different, with Chock playing the role of the matador and Bates the bull.
Good luck to anyone getting in their way.
While scores generally improve as the season progresses, Chock and Bates’ score Sunday surpassed the previous world’s best mark this season, a 211.01 from the French team of Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron at the Grand Prix de France.
“We can make a lot of improvements on both programs, especially this free dance,” said Bates, who along with Chock helped the U.S. win team gold at the Beijing Olympics but has never stood on an Olympic podium in the actual ice dance competition.
“We feel like it has the potential to be a very powerful free dance,” he said.
In the women’s event, Liu opened with a triple flip, slightly under-rotated the back half of a triple lutz-triple toe loop combo, but was otherwise largely clean in a free skate set to a medley of Lady Gaga music and choreographed by her coach, Massimo Scali. It was enough for her first Grand Prix gold medal after a second-place finish at the Cup of China — her first podium after four previous misses.
The 20-year-old from Clovis, California, finished with 214.27 points, while short-program winner Rinka Watanabe was second with 210.96 after a free skate that included a step on her triple axel and a pair of under-rotated jumps that ultimately made the difference.
Anastasiia Gubanova of Georgia was third with 204.69 points while Starr Andrews finished fifth in the next-best U.S. performance.
The Grand Prix schedule concludes next week at the Finlandia Trophy in Helsinki, Finland. The top performers in each discipline after their two Grand Prix assignments then qualify for the Grand Prix Final, which takes place in December in Nagoya, Japan.
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AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
By DAVE SKRETTA
AP Sports Writer
