Madison Chock and Evan Bates: A Love Story with a Twist
It’s hard not to root for Madison Chock and Evan Bates, the American ice dance pair we’ve watched evolve since their debut in Sochi back in 2014. We’ve seen them grow from teammates to friends to lovers, and they even got married in 2024. It feels like a romantic movie, really. But, the recent events in Milan didn’t exactly end like a fairy tale.
Entering the competition as gold medal favorites, Chock and Bates faced a narrow defeat in the final against the controversial French team of Laurence Fournier Baudry and Guillaume Cizeron. The backdrop of their partnership is, well, complicated. Fournier Baudry’s previous partner—a situation made even more complex by serious allegations against him—had led her to switch teams, leaving Canada behind to join France, openly defending her former boyfriend.
This whole situation was already tense, and the scoring issues just added to the chaos. A French judge, Jezebel Dabois, rated Chock and Bates much lower than others did. In fact, her scoring seemed unusually critical compared to the rest. It’s almost as if she had a grudge against them, consistently giving the French pair higher marks while significantly under-scoring Chock and Bates.
As I followed the events on SkatingScores.com, it became evident that Dabois’s scores were not in line with what one might expect, especially based on the actual performances. Evaluating Dabois’s scoring patterns—and boy, they seem skewed—especially during the Milan finals, calls into question how impartial these evaluations are. There’s a striking 6.37 standard deviation difference across events, which really raises eyebrows.
Interestingly, even though five out of nine judges preferred Chock/Bates, Dabois’s glaringly different score swung the result. This discrepancy underlines the subjective nature of ice dance scoring; how can one judge’s opinion differ so drastically from others? It certainly makes you wonder.
Looking into Dabois’s recent competitions reveals a troubling trend. For example, the 2025 Japanese Figure Skating Grand Prix featured uncharacteristic inconsistencies in her scoring as well. There, her favoritism was so blatant that a French pair, despite missing an element, benefitted from her inflated scores. The inconsistency just doesn’t add up.
It’s evident that Dabois has repeatedly provided disproportionate scores in favor of the French duo across multiple competitions. If you think about it, when France won the Olympic gold by a mere 1.43 points, it’s clear that Dabois’s role was pivotal in shaping that outcome.
Sports scoring, especially in areas blending art and athleticism, is rarely straightforward. Still, it’s critical we examine the biases some judges may hold. It feels terribly unfair for athletes—who dedicate years of hard work—if their futures hinge on the subjective views of those judges, potentially skewing competition results.
