Controversial Scoring and a Mysterious French Duo: Unraveling the 2026 Olympic Ice Dancing Saga | Vanity Fair

This past Sunday, they decided to call an audible—and it paid off. I’m speaking, obviously, about the US in the Olympic figure skating team event. Going into the last category, the men’s free skate, the US was tied with Japan. So the American crew brought in the big guns: self-anointed “quad god” Ilia Malinin. The star athlete wasn’t originally slated to skate that day, yet he delivered a clutch performance, clinching the gold for an elated Team USA.

But American husband-and-wife ice dancing duo Madison Chock and Evan Bates barely had time to soak in the victory before they had to turn around and skate in their own individual ice dancing event. With a partnership spanning 15 years, this is Chock and Bates’s fourth Olympics together, but their first as a married couple. (Their first date: her 16th birthday at Bahama Breeze.) The three-time world champs are considered the best in the world, and came to the 2026 Games as heavy favorites. That’s why the outcome of Monday’s dance was such a surprise.

Skating to a Lenny Kravitz medley for the ’90s-themed rhythm dance, Chock and Bates executed a high-octane, polished performance that highlighted their status as vets. “I have never seen them skate that determined,” gushed Olympian turned commentator Johnny Weir. “They were hungry tonight.” But after a review by the technical panel, the couple hit a snag when one of their key elements was unexpectedly downgraded from a difficulty level of four to a level three.

Apparently, they came down on the wrong blade edge during a pattern step. Yet even Olympic commentators couldn’t detect the alleged error: Andrea Joyce said it was “pretty impossible to be able to tell” that the two had made a mistake. The ice dancing couple seemed caught off guard at their final score of 89.72, with Chock raising her eyebrows at the number. Bates later said their performance on Monday “was even better than the team event,” in which they scored a world-leading 91.06. Former Olympic gold medalist and skating’s preeminent ambassador, Scott Hamilton, went so far as to say he was “surprised” by the result: “I didn’t see that one coming.”

Chock and Bates are still very much in contention to win at Wednesday’s ice dancing final, and no one’s sounding the alarm of corruption just yet. But I’ll say the quiet part out loud: This new scoring weirdness is happening under the long shadow of past skating scandals.

As anyone who follows this sport knows, figure skating lives at the intersection of athletics and artistry. That makes it one of the Olympics’ most crowd-pleasing spectacles—but also one that’s frustratingly subjective. That subjectivity has at times made scores vulnerable to collusion amongst judges. The most notable example came at the 2002 Olympics, when a judge admitted to being pressured to place a specific pairs couple in first, before recanting her statement. A new scoring system was created as a result of the controversy, which includes base values assigned to every element. But while much more math is involved now, even the updated system isn’t bulletproof; it came under scrutiny in 2014, when frontrunner Yuna Kim came in second to Adelina Sotnikova.

If skating’s history weren’t enough to make some side-eye yesterday’s ice dancing scores, there’s the added drama of who bested Chock and Bates: the newly formed French couple Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron, who got a fractionally higher score of 90.18 for their dance to Madonna’s “Vogue.” Beaudry and Cizeron, who first teamed up last March, entered the Games amid a swirl of controversy regarding both of their past partners. According to former Olympian Adam Rippon in Netflix’s new three-part docuseries on ice dancing, Glitter and Gold, there’s something “sinister” surrounding the couple.

Cizeron is the reigning 2022 Olympic champion; he won gold with Gabriella Papadakis. But the two retired after Beijing—or at least, Papadakis did. In the docuseries, Cizeron says he returned to skating and partnered up with his friend Beaudry because he “missed competing and the adrenaline rush.” Yet in January, Papadakis released a memoir, So as Not to Disappear, in which she alleges that her split with Cizeron was less than amicable. She claims Cizeron was “controlling,” “demanding,” and “critical” during the partnership. Cizeron has denied the allegations, calling them a “smear campaign,” and stating that their “relationship was built on equal collaboration and marked by success and mutual support.”

Beaudry, meanwhile, started off skating with her former partner and current boyfriend, Nikolaj Sørensen, in 2012. The couple originally competed for Denmark, but represented Canada in the 2022 Olympics, where they finished ninth. In 2024, Sørensen was investigated for the alleged sexual assault of a figure skating coach and former skater. The investigation led Canada’s Office of Sport Integrity to suspend Sørensen for sexual maltreatment. (Sørensen has denied the allegations.) As a result, Beaudry had to find a new partner. In the docuseries, she addresses the fallout: “I never really publicly discuss about how much damage it’s created,” she says. Sørensen later appealed his suspension, and it was overturned last June, though the case is still pending.

Chock and Bates have indicated that these Olympics will likely be their last, and they’re locked in to get the gold medal, which has so far eluded them. Asked about her mindset going into tomorrow’s competition, Chock showed no signs of backing down, telling reporters, “The game is always on. You should know us by now.” As for Beaudry and Cizeron, they’re doing everything they can to shut out the noise. “We love skating, and we love skating together, and this is what we’re focusing on,” Cizeron said.

Wednesday’s stakes are high all around. For one couple, winning will fulfill a dream 15 years in the making. For the other, it may offer the redemption they still seem to be seeking. And then there’s always option number three: another pair winning altogether, which might just create a skating scandal for the ages.

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