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The Score That Changed Everything
Five of the nine judges ranked Chock and Bates first overall.
But French judge Jezabel Dabouis gave her own country’s team a 137.45 while scoring the Americans at just 129.74. That 7.71-point gap stands out sharply against the rest of the panel.
Even the Czech judge, who awarded France the highest score overall at 138.49, still gave the Americans 135.23. The American judge scored her compatriots at 137.67 — hardly evidence of runaway national favoritism.
Remove Dabouis’ outlier numbers and the math tells a different story.
The Americans would have won.
Instead, they were left with silver.
Evan Bates kept his composure in the aftermath, telling CBS News: “We felt like we delivered our absolute best performance that we could have. It was our Olympic moment. It felt like a winning skate to us.”
Madison Chock added a pointed observation that resonated far beyond figure skating: “Anytime the public is confused by results, it does a disservice to our sport. I think it’s hard to retain fans when it’s difficult to understand what is happening on the ice.”
Those words cut deep.
Because fans weren’t just confused. They were furious.
A Pattern That Raises Questions
Data analysts at SkatingScores.com examined Dabouis’ past competitions and claim to see a recurring trend.
At the 2025 Grand Prix in Japan, the French pair reportedly made significant mistakes, including a fall. Dabouis’ scoring still helped push them to silver.
At the 2026 European Championships, analysts say she awarded France notably high marks while rivals like Italy and the UK received sharply lower scores.
In Milan, the statistical anomaly returned.
Every other judge had Chock and Bates closer to France — some even higher.
Only one score created the separation that decided Olympic gold.
The International Skating Union responded with a corporate statement:
“It is normal for there to be a range of scores given by different judges in any panel and a number of mechanisms are used to mitigate these variations,” the statement read, adding the ISU has “full confidence in the scores given and remains completely committed to fairness.”
But when a 7.71-point discrepancy from one judge outweighs the entire winning margin, critics argue those “mechanisms” clearly failed.
History Repeats Itself?
The controversy inevitably recalls the 2002 Salt Lake City scandal.
French judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne later admitted she had been pressured by officials to support Russia’s pairs team. The vote-swapping scheme rocked the sport and ultimately forced the International Skating Union to abandon the old 6.0 scoring system.
Canada was eventually awarded a duplicate gold medal after global outrage forced accountability.
Now, more than two decades later, critics argue the “new” scoring system did not eliminate bias — it simply made it more difficult to prove.
Dartmouth economist Eric Zitzewitz has previously found that judges tend to inflate scores for their own country’s athletes by more than three points on average. The ISU designed its system to dilute single-judge influence.
But when one judge’s scoring margin exceeds the final medal difference, skepticism is inevitable.
The Athletes Pay The Price
Guillaume Cizeron, competing for France, appeared to stumble during synchronized twizzles — an error that normally leads to deductions. Observers noted that the French step sequence showed visible instability.
Yet the final result stood.
Meanwhile, Chock and Bates handled the aftermath with grace, planning to remain for closing ceremonies and celebrate their Olympic journey.
Still, thousands of fans have signed a petition calling for the International Olympic Committee and ISU to review the scoring.
Whether that happens remains unclear.
What is clear is this: when spectators leave questioning the legitimacy of Olympic results, the damage goes beyond one medal.
Trust is fragile.
And for many Americans watching in Milan, that trust just cracked again.
