Olympic favorites Chock and Bates win record-setting seventh U.S. Figure Skating ice dance title

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Madison Chock and Evan Bates danced their way to a record-setting seventh U.S. Figure Skating title on Saturday night, showcasing their trademark creativity, athleticism and precision in their final competition before the Milan Cortina Olympics.

The three-time reigning world champions, performing a flamenco-style dance to a version of the Rolling Stones hit “Paint It Black” from the dystopian sci-fi Western show “Westworld,” produced a season-best free skate and finished with 228.87 points.

Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik were second with 213.65 points and Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko were third with 206.95, making those two pairs the likely choices to join Chock and Bates on the American squad for the upcoming Winter Games.

U.S. Figure Skating will announce its selections on Sunday.

“The feeling that we got from the audience today was unlike anything I’ve ever felt before,” said Chock, who along with Bates helped the Americans win team gold at the Beijing Olympics four years ago, but finished a disappointing fourth in the ice dance.

They’ll be the heavy favorites to win gold next month in Italy.

“I felt so much love and joy,” Chock continued, “and I’m so grateful for this moment.”

The men’s medals also were to be decided on Saturday, though two-time world champion Ilia Malinin had built such a lead after his short program that the self-styled “Quad God” would have to stumble mightily to miss out on a fourth consecutive title.

The real question is who will join Malinin on the Olympic team.

The U.S. also has qualified the maximum of three men’s spots for the Winter Games, and competition is tight between second-place Tomoko Hiwatashi, fan favorite Jason Brown, Andrew Torgashev and Maxim Naumov to round out the nationals podium.

There wasn’t much drama in the dance competition.

At least for the top step.

Yet sometimes the winning programs aren’t necessarily the ones that win over the crowd. And while they only finished fifth, the sister-brother duo of Oona Brown and Gage Brown — former world junior champions — earned the first standing ovation of the night for their moody, creative program set to selections from the film “The Godfather.”

“I think that was one of the best — if not the best — performances we’ve had,” Gage Brown said afterward.

The Browns ended a stretch in which most of the couples taking the ice made some kind of significant mistake.

Then it was a parade of near-perfect programs, each couple trying to upstage the previous one.

Emily Bratti and Ian Somerville were the first to knock the Brown siblings from first place, then reigning bronze medalists Caroline Green and Michael Parsons took over first place with their program, set to “Escalate” by Tsar B and “Son of Nyx” by Hozier.

Carreira and Ponomarenko, the back-to-back U.S. silver medalists, knew that a podium spot would probably earn them a spot on the Olympic team. And they delivered with a sharp program inside the Enterprise Center in which the seemed to channel the characters from the 2006 psychological thriller film “Perfume: The Story of a Murder.”

The 23-year-old Zingas and 24-year-old Kolesnik quickly assumed the top spot, but with Chock and Bates warming up on the ice as their scores were read, they knew it would probably be about a 4-minute stay in first place.

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AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics