Canada's Gilles, Poirier sit 2nd after rhythm dance at figure skating world championships
Americans Chock, Bates hold 3.74-point lead on their quest for 3rd straight world title
The word "rivalry" tends to carry a combative connotation, so perhaps it's best to describe the relationship between American ice dancers Madison Chock and Evan Bates and their Canadian counterparts, Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, as healthy competition.
They are fond for each other. Yet they also push each other every time they step on the ice.
That was the case again after the rhythm dance at the world championships on Friday in Boston, when Chock and Bates delivered a season-best performance to take the lead heading into the free dance. Their score of 90.18 points was nearly four ahead of Gilles and Poirier, their closest challengers, giving them quite a cushion heading into Saturday's night conclusion.
WATCH l Gilles, Poirier earn 86.44 points in rhythm dance:
"That's a tough amount of points to catch up on," Poirier admitted, "but we also know that sport is really unpredictable. It's been an unpredictable season. And so our job is to come out tomorrow and skate to the best of our abilities, and share with the crowd and with the skating community our art and our craft, and what we enjoy doing."
Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson were third with 83.86 for Britain, and Italy's Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri looked out of sync while scoring 83.06 for fourth. They were the only countries to break up a whole lot of Canada and U.S. on the leaderboard.
Marjorie Lajoie and Zachary Lagha were fifth for Canada, just ahead of two American teams — Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko and the duo of Caroline Green and Michael Parsons — giving the neighbouring nations five of the top seven.
Watch live coverage of the figure skating world championships on CBCSports.ca and CBC Gem. Here's the full streaming schedule and here are the latest results.
Chock and Bates are going for their third consecutive world title, something no team has accomplished in ice dance since Oksana Grishuk and Evgeni Platov for Russia in the 1990s. Toronto's Gilles and Poirier, from Unionville, Ont., finished second to the U.S. duo last year.
The Americans also hope to use it as a launching point for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy.
Chock and Bates were part of the U.S. bunch that ultimately was awarded team gold after a protracted investigation into Russian doping at the 2022 Games in Beijing. But while they cherish those medals, Chock and Bates acknowledge that they are not the same as winning on your own, and that is something that continues to drive them.
They finished eighth in 2014 in Russia, ninth four years later in South Korea, and an agonizing fourth in Beijing.
"We're putting all our chips on the table for next season," Bates said. "We've been so focused on absolutely maximizing our potential for Boston, and then for the next 12 months. We're going to treat it like it's our last shot."
They will probably have to contend with Gilles and Poirier along the way.
They always do.
WATCH l Gilles and Poirier 'really felt that energy from the crowd':
On Friday night, the Canadians delivered a fun, upbeat rhythm dance set to the most American of music — The Beach Boys — and scored 86.44 points to temporarily take the lead. Then the American team followed them to the ice, and Chock and Bates had the home crowd in TD Garden on its feet for their "tour of the decades" through song and dance.
There was the theme from "Hawaii Five-O" and "Let's Twist Again." They were "Stayin' Alive" and took a trip through the "Car Wash." The couple even tried to "blame it on the boogie" before getting the crowd to do the "Y.M.C.A." And they fittingly finished with "Last Dance" by Donna Summer, who was born in the Boston neighborhood of Mission Hill.
"It was probably the most fun I've had thus far on competitive ice in a performance, maybe ever," Chock said afterward. "It was really a joy to perform in front of a home crowd and share that excitement with Evan. It was the best."
WATCH l Full replay of rhythm dance at figure skating worlds:
Gilles and Poirier were unaware that Chock and Bates had beaten their score; they were busy doing TV interviews deep inside TD Garden when word filtered back that they would be in second place heading into Saturday night.
Not that it seemed to matter to them.
Gilles and Poirier prefer to "keep our heads in the sand," as he put it, and focus only on what they can control. They don't do any scoreboard watching, and unlike most teams, they rarely know what other competitors are doing on the ice.
"We pay as little attention to other people as possible," Poirier said. "We find that's when we skate our best, when we're really focused on the job that we need to do, and we're really focused on the emotion of the performance that we want to put on."
They will need to skate their best to overcome the deficit that Chock and Bates built Friday night.
"The balance as an athlete is putting enough expectation on yourself that it forces you to improve and be better and want to be better all the time, but not put so much that you sabotaged yourself," Poirier said. "This is the thing that we all have to balance, and we all have to learn how to balance. I think experience and time has really taught us where the middle is."
Liu dethrones Sakamoto
Alysa Liu skated around the ice in disbelief, her golden dress shimmering in the lights of TD Garden, and the appreciative roar from a sellout crowd reminded her why she had returned to the sport following a nearly two-year retirement.
When her score was finally read, the 19-year-old from Clovis, California, had made history.
Liu became the first American women's figure skating world champion in nearly two decades, dethroning three-time defending champ Kaori Sakamoto with a brilliant free skate Friday night. Her program to a rendition of "MacArthur Park" by Boston native Donna Summer earned her a standing ovation, and allowed Liu to finish with 222.97 points.
WATCH | Liu becomes 1st American woman to capture world figure skating title since 2006:
"I mean, it means so much to me and everything I've been through," Liu said. "My last skating experience, my time away and this time around — I'm so happy, I guess. I'm mostly glad I could put out two of my best performances."
Liu's coaches, Phillip DiGuglielmo and Massimo Scali, pulled her into a hug in the kiss-and-cry area of the arena. Moments later, Sakamoto came over from where she had watched in the leader's chair and squeezed her tightly, as if Japan's hero was passing Liu the torch as the first world champion from the U.S. since Kimmie Meissner stood atop the podium in 2006.
"What the hell?" Liu asked in disbelief. "I don't know. I don't know how to process this."
WATCH | Canada's Schizas finishes 11th at world figure skating championships:
Sakamoto finished with 217.98 points to add a silver medal to her three previous golds. Her Japanese teammate, Mone Chiba, was third with 215.24 points while Isabeau Levito and Amber Glenn gave the Americans three of the top five.
"We are all so strong," Levito said, "and we are all such fighters, and we all have our strengths, and are so different but we're all so sweet with each other. I'm just so glad these are my fellow Team USA skaters."
Madeline Schizas of Oakville, Ont., finished 11th with a season-best 190.79. The 22-year-old posted the sixth-best short program on Wednesday but ranked 11th in the free skate.
WATCH | Schizas tells CBC Sports placing 11th is 'a tough pill to swallow':
Schizas fell just shy of the top-10 finish needed to earn Canada two provisional spots in the women's event at next year's Olympics.
"I'm a little disappointed, but these things happen," said Schizas, who achieved her best result at worlds. "There was a lot of pressure today and I'm still satisfied with the way I skated. It wasn't perfect, but I feel like I was well prepared. I perhaps had a little less speed and that got reflected in my program."
WATCH | Full replay of the women's free program at figure skating worlds:
With files from CBC Sports
