The two couples have both been in the same ice dance universe for 14 seasons, with each moving at a different trajectory and speed toward the shiny medals that once seemed distant.
One team, Madison Chock and Evan Bates of the United States, got there faster and collected more medals of all colors and more of the most glittering.
Yet as they and rivals Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier of Canada home in on the biggest and brightest medal of all, an Olympic gold, the gap between the two couples has narrowed to the point that who stands on the top step of the podium at the 2026 Winter Games is almost impossible to predict.
Even the results of the 2025 World Championships that began Wednesday in Boston likely will not be enough to make one couple the decisive favorite next year in Milan, Italy.
(And, yes, it would be foolish to write off completely the title chances of Italian couple Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri, fellow travelers in that senior ice dance universe for 15 years. The Italians finished third and second in the past two world meets. And there will apparently be at least one Russian team, so…)
But the focus in Boston — and going forward into the Olympic season — will be on the two North American teams.
At last year’s World Championships, the U.S. took gold by 2.52 points over the Canadians - the smallest ice dance winning margin at worlds in 10 years.
At February’s Four Continents Championships, the Canadians took gold by .53 over the Americans, the smallest ice dance winning margin in the 21 seasons the event has used the current judging and scoring system.
In both events, the winning team lost the free dance to the runner-up.
At the 2024 Worlds, Chock and Bates won a second straight title despite a Montreal Bell Centre crowd pulling loudly for the Canadians.
“So many moments in sport, it’s not black and white, there’s so much nuance,” Poirier said. “There’s a part of you that’s like, ‘Oh, darn, we were really close, and it would have been nice to win.’ There’s the other part that’s like, ‘We just were able to have that skate in front of a home crowd in a really huge rink with so many of our friends and family there. There’s kind of a bittersweetness to all of it.”
Although figure skaters never are really competing directly head-to-head, they are competing for a higher final standing.
Chock and Bates have finished higher than Gilles and Poirier in 25 of their 30 meetings, according to skatingscores.com. Yet the Canadians have won two of the last six, beginning with the 2022 Grand Prix Final in Torino, Italy.
That Grand Prix Final came just before Gilles was diagnosed with Stage 1 ovarian cancer, which led to surgery removing an ovary and her appendix. Barely three months later, she and Poirier had the most impressive medal of their career: a bronze at the 2023 World Championships.
“It felt like the bronze was our gold because of everything we had been through that year,” Gilles said.
“We had hit a peak moment (in Torino). We had never been this successful. And all of a sudden, I have to have surgery and experience this unknown cancer beast. Now I feel I am totally back to where we were in Torino.”
That brings us to the next meeting of Gilles-Poirier and Chock-Bates, also at a huge rink, TD Garden. The rhythm dance is Friday, the free dance Saturday.
“I think what’s really nice (about the rivalry) is the two of us are extremely distinct in our own styles,” Chock said. “What I admire about them is they have always had their own voice, and they never strayed from that.
“Both times they’ve done tango programs, it’s been a very different take on a tango than the typical one you would see. It just works, and it‘s really refreshing to see a different style.”
Gilles and Poirier always have been envelope pushers, whether in costumes or interpretations of music.
“What I admire most about them is that they have stuck to their guns,” Bates said. “They have not deviated from their uniqueness. They’ve kind of leaned into it.”
In one of their four costume options for this season’s rhythm dance, Gilles and Poirier are dressed in red-and-white lifeguard costumes (also a nod to Canada’s colors) as they skate the Beach Boys and the Surfaris.
Their costumes for a Beatles medley rhythm dance in 2016 echoed characters from the iconic Sgt. Pepper album cover, she in hot pink, he in royal blue, with the appropriately bright military uniform braiding. And then there were the blindingly orange, bejeweled jumpsuits they wore in the 2022 Olympic rhythm dance, right in step with Elton John and his music.
“We always have a lot of fun with costumes,” said Carol Lane, their primary coach.
Chock has designed many of her own competitive costumes, which are striking but not startling like many of those used by Poirier and Gilles.
“I don’t think we’ve ever had a conversation like, ‘What’s going to make us stand out?’’’ Poirier said. “In our minds, trying different things every year allowed us to find our niche.
“I think a lot of our work starts from a question. And that question is usually, ‘Is this possible?’ I think what has made us so unique over time is people don’t know what we are going to do next.’’
They feel the same way watching Chock and Bates unveil each season a more complex lift or a more intricately complex link between elements.
In this year’s free dance, Bates slings Chock around his waist and chest for some dozen rotations; pulls her quickly across the ice in a transitional move that looks like the beginning of a pairs’ death spiral; carries her upside down; and finishes by hooking her left skate over his left leg for a whirlybird spin that starts just above the ice and ends at his waist level.
“They’re very innovative with their tricks and how they integrate some of their skating and transitions,” Gilles said. “Seeing them kind of have a very similar path to ours and succeed has been wonderful to watch. It’s been nice for them to continue to push the sport, just like we’ve been trying to do the past few years.”
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA - FEBRUARY 20: Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier of Canada compete in the Ice Dance Rhythm Dance during the ISU Four Continents Figure Skating Championships at Mokdong Ice Rink on February 20, 2025 in Seoul, South Korea. (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun - International Skating Union/International Skating Union via Getty Images)
Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier have won three World Championships medals, but seek their first gold this week. (International Skating Union via Getty Images)
More and more, ice dancers looking for an Olympic medal in their discipline have learned to play the long game.
If, as expected, one of the three teams that have swept the medals at the last two world championships goes on to win the 2026 Olympic gold medal, both members of the couple would be the oldest Olympic ice dance champions in history, according to the OlyMADMen.
If Guignard and Fabbri, now 35 and 37, respectively, win a medal, each would be older than any ice dancer who has been on an Olympic medal podium, a distinction now belonging to British skaters Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, 36 and 35, respectively, when they won bronze in 1994.
Three of the four skaters on the other two medal contenders — Chock, Gilles and Poirier, now 32, 33 and 33 –- would be older than everyone in the past but Torvill and Dean. Bates, now 36, would be older than all previous medalists.
No Olympic singles medalist since World War II has been older than 27. Five pairs medalists have been 33 or older.
“I think ice dance is a sport that allows for some longevity,” Chock said. “It is certainly hard on the body in some ways, but the impact on our bodies is a lot less than if we were jumping or being thrown.”
During the years when Gilles-Poirier and Chock-Bates began their partnerships and worked their way up toward the top (or, in the case of the U.S. couple, worked their way back up after early medal success at worlds), three couples dominated the world scene: first Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir of Canada, the 2010 and 2018 Olympic champions; concurrently, Meryl Davis and Charlie White of the U.S., the 2014 Olympic champions, then Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron of France, the 2022 Olympic champions.
From 2010 through 2022, those three teams combined to win all 10 world titles in which at least one couple competed and accounted for seven of the eight Olympic gold and silver medals.
“We grew up in an ice dance era with so many incredible athletes,” Gilles said. “I think it was a good thing for us, because we continually had motivation to come in and try to beat them.
“When they retired, our (skill) level had improved because we had to compete against the best. And I think there’s such a dominance (now) with Madison and Evan and us and the Italians because we really stood our ground during such a hard period of ice dance. It shows our strength to continue in the sport at a higher age than the average.”
When a figure skating team struggles, the temptation is to change coaches. Neither the Canadians nor the Italians did switch, while Chock and Bates made such a move after a disappointing ninth at the 2018 Olympics, a striking drop after having won world medals in 2015 and 2016.
Chock and Bates left their longtime training base in suburban Detroit to train at the Ice Academy of Montreal (I.AM), which was attracting ice dancers from around the world as it quickly became the discipline’s 800-pound gorilla.
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA - FEBRUARY 20: Madison Chock and Evan Bates of the United States compete in the Ice Dance Rhythm Dance during the ISU Four Continents Figure Skating Championships at Mokdong Ice Rink on February 20, 2025 in Seoul, South Korea. (Photo by Annice Lyn/Getty Images)
Madison Chock and Evan Bates are trying to become the first ice dancers to win three consecutive world titles in 28 years. (Getty Images)
In the nine world meets beginning with 2015, I.AM skaters have won eight titles and eight other medals. At the upcoming worlds, one-third of the 36 entries will be I.AM skaters — 10 from the training center in Montreal and two from the affiliate in London, Ontario. They will represent 10 different countries.
Even though their results stagnated from 2015 through 2018, Gilles and Poirier stayed with what they call a “boutique” coaching and support team, Ice Dance Elite, founded and directed by Lane in the Scarborough district of Toronto.
“We never thought about moving,” Poirier said. “As much as we were stuck in the standings, we felt we were improving.”
Gilles and Poirier will be one of Ice Dance Elite’s two teams at worlds. The other is native Canadians Carolane Soucisse and her husband, Shane Firus, now skating for Ireland after having represented Canada until 2022.
“It’s kind of fun (being the outsiders),” Gilles said. “It can be hard at times, because you can look and be like, ‘Well, they have all the top athletes there.’ And it’s like they make our coaches seem like they’re less qualified, which is absolutely the opposite.
“The downside of having a bigger group like (I.AM) is that the time you get with your coaches is less. We get so much attention, and so do our other teammates, and we thrive in that energy. We take pride in being small but mighty.”
Chock and Bates understand that point of view, even while feeling they get all the needed attention at I.AM, co-founded by their coaches, Marie-France Dubreuil, her husband, Patrice Lauzon, and Romain Haguenauer. As ice dance partners, Dubreuil and Lauzon won two world silver medals.
“They (Gilles and Poirier) are the top team of their school, so maybe they’re getting more attention from their coaches and their team,” Bates opined. “That said, our coaches give us plenty of attention.”
As was the case for Gilles and Poirier last year, Chock and Bates will relish the attention from skating in front of a home crowd, especially in Boston, long a figure skating mecca. It is where they made their first of three U.S. Olympic teams (2014) and won their second of five world medals.
“When you skate well on home soil, and you really get that big ovation, I do think like judges are human beings,” Bates said. “It’s hard not to feel that energy in the stadium and to not to have it color a little bit your impression of how great a skate it was.”
Bates did not expect political tensions between the U.S. and Canada that have colored meetings of teams from the two countries in other sports this winter will carry over to the more genteel atmosphere of figure skating competitions, where the judging usually is the only thing booed.
Yet…
“I’ll just share a short story,” Bates said, a twinkle in his eyes during our recent Zoom interview as he related an incident at a Montreal coffee shop.
“I ordered an Americano today. It was delivered as a Canadien.”
Philip Hersh is a special contributor to NBCSports.com. He has covered figure skating at the last 12 Winter Olympics.
