Boston (AFP) – Americans Madison Chock and Evan Bates dazzled again in the free dance to become the first duo in 28 years to win a third straight ice dance world title on Saturday. Leading by 3.74 points after the rhythm dance, the Americans captivated in their jazz-themed free skate, scoring 131.88 points for a total of 222.06.
“We’ve been waiting for a moment like that for a long time,” Bates told broadcaster NBC. “The last couple of world titles we had didn’t feel as good as that one. This will go right to the top of the list forever.”
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Canada’s Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, who beat Chock and Bates at the Four Continents Championships in February, skated a superb free dance to “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” scoring 130.10 for a total of 216.54. They added another world silver to the one they captured on home ice in Montreal last year after winning bronze in 2021 and 2023.
Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson of Britain were third, garnering 123.25 points for their crowd-pleasing free dance to a medley of Beyonce hits for a total of 207.11. They’re the first Britons to claim a world medal since Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean won the last of their four consecutive ice dance titles in 1984.
Chock and Bates, who have skated together since 2011 and were married last year, are the first ice dancers to win three successive world titles since Russia’s Oksana Grishuk and Evgeni Platov won four from 1994-97. Now they will turn their sights to the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, less than a year away. “We’re going to treat it like it’s our last shot,” Bates said before the world championships started.
Chock and Bates nabbed a second US gold of the week after Alysa Liu’s stunning triumph in the women’s competition. Liu, 19, topped the podium just a year after returning to the sport she walked away from in 2022 when she was just 16.
And later Saturday, self-styled “Quad God” Ilia Malinin was poised to give the hosts another triumph at TD Garden — home of the NBA champion Boston Celtics and the NHL’s Boston Bruins. Malinin, 20, delivered one of the greatest short programs ever performed on Thursday, scoring 110.41 points to put himself atop the standings in pursuit of a second straight world title.
Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama, the 2022 Olympic silver medallist and a three-time world runner-up, was in second with Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Shadorov, the Four Continents champion, a distant third going into the final free skate. Malinin hasn’t lost a competition in almost 18 months. If he does top the podium, it will mark the first time the United States have won world titles in three disciplines at the same figure skating world championships.
© 2024 AFP
