Chock and Bates rock as reigning champ US leads team figure skating event at Milan Cortina Olympics

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MILAN (AP) — Madison Chock and Evan Bates set the tone for the powerful U.S. Figure Skating team at the Milan Cortina Olympics on Friday with a rocking, high-energy rhythm dance set to music by Lenny Kravitz to open the team figure skating competition.

Alysa Liu made sure the defending champion Americans would maintain their lead going into Day 2 of the event.

Chock and Bates scored a world-leading 91.06 points to open the three-day competition, where the U.S. is the defending champ, before a packed crowd at the Milano Ice Skating Arena that included U.S. Vice President JD Vance, his family and other dignitaries.

Pairs skaters Ellie Kam and Danny O'Shea finished solidly in the middle of the pack in their short program for the U.S., while Liu was second to Japan's Kaori Sakamoto in the women's short program, leaving the Americans with 25 points.

Japan was second with 23 and host-nation Italy third with 22 going into the men's short program Saturday. After that, the competition is whittled from 10 teams to the top five, with those five also performing their free dance later in the day.

The men's, women's and pairs free skates will ultimately decide the medals Sunday.

“We definitely skated great and we’re very happy, as you saw when we finished. I think we both felt the excitement of just getting these Olympics underway,” said Bates, who along with Chock were part of the gold medal-winning team at the 2022 Winter Games.

Yet Chock and Bates, the three-time world ice dance champions, never received their medals in Beijing, thanks to an investigation into Russian doping. In fact, Chock and Bates wouldn't get them until two years later at the Summer Olympics in Paris.

So there is a little added motivation for the Americans to win a second consecutive team title.

“I think we have the best generation of figure skaters within the U.S. right now,” O'Shea said. “Amazing people helping each other, supporting each other, and Maddy and Evan leading the charge, being the experienced group who are so helpful to everybody.”

Chock and Bates, fresh off their record seventh U.S. title, also are favored to win the individual ice dance event later in the Winter Games. But they got a taste of how challenging that could be from the new French duo of Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron — the latter the defending Olympic champion with his former partner, Gabriella Papadakis.

Just before Chock and Bates took the ice, Beaudry and Cizeron had posted their own world-best score of 89.98 points.

“I think our goal was to really keep building,” Cizeron said. “I think we’ve been improving at each competition and adding to our score, obviously, but getting more precise with our technical elements and having more fun, enjoying the performance, and giving 100%. So I think we’re kind of still climbing that ramp a little bit.”

Chock and Bates gave the U.S. a big lead over the Japanese after struggles by their ice dancers, but the pairs duo of world champions Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara got the reigning silver medalists back in the mix by winning their portion of the competition.

Anastasiia Metelkina and Luka Berulava were second in pairs for Georgia with Italy's Sara Conti and Niccolo Macii third.

Kam and O'Shea were fifth in the pairs short program, but that was good enough to keep the Americans in the lead.

“You could hear it when we landed our side-by-side jump set. It was so loud, I literally couldn’t hear anything,” Kam said. “I couldn’t hear our music for a second. I was like, ‘Oh, OK. Lock in. We need to do the rest of this program.’”

Perhaps fittingly, the last two women on the ice Friday represented the favored American and Japanese teams.

They also happened to be the last two world champions.

The 20-year-old Liu, back at the Olympics after a brief retirement, was clean on all three of her jumping passes, including her finishing triple lutz-triple loop. She wound up with 74.90 points for her program, set to “Promise” by Icelandic-Chinese artist Laufey.

She wouldn't wipe the smile off he face afterward.

“I never thought I would be back, honestly,” Liu said. “It's surreal.”

With the Americans poised to take a big lead into Saturday, the 25-year-old Sakamoto delivered with the poise and precision of a veteran. The reigning Olympic bronze medalist also was clean on her jumping passes, including a triple flip-triple toe, and her score of 78.88 points gave the Japanese squad a much-needed 10 points to keep pace with the U.S.

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