CHOCK / BATES (USA) | Ice Dance Rhythm Dance | GP Final 2023

Our next team represents United States, Madison Chalk, Evan Bates. Boy, what a team this is. World Champion 2022-2023 season. Their season's best, 85.61, earning that of the Grand Prix Espo. A few weeks back, a little skate too. Another one bites the dust. Who wants to live forever? I want it all. Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. Headline step to start. Each of these difficult turns will be so crucial and vital in the tech score. Madison and Evan also safely through the twizzles. Well, another brilliant performance. I don't think this group got the memo on the twizzles. They're executed beautifully. Absolutely brilliant. And this, their seventh Grand Prix final participation. That's a record shared with the 2002 Olympic champions, Anissina Mpezza, and their own coaches, Marie-France Debrun and Patrice Lauzon. But they've never won the title. Four times silver medals, the first of those in their first appearance at the Grand Prix final in 2014. Can they do enough to take the Grand Prix final to add to the world title that they achieved in March? Boy, it's going to be ever so close and will not be decided in the rhythm dance. At this stage, for sure, it's yet still to come, but you can see them coming off the ice with great smiles on their face and full of energy. That performance. And this, yet, this to me, Ted, is where the judges have to be. So they have to have studied their rules so, so much to be able to stand by every single grade of execution for each of the five elements and every competition score, because there needs to be, you know, such confidence in every score assigned because they're all brilliant. And if we're just watching a show here, we'd be saying, Oh, what a wonderful, wonderful night of entertainment these ice dancers give us. But unfortunately, we need to, you know, decide and decipher what separates each and every one of them. Yeah, and thank Arshad, the panel of experts doing that, because I don't think I could do that. Oh, very, very difficult. So much detail. Yeah, you're right, Ted. That's especially because as fans of this sport, you know, I've just said that they've seven times beat you at this final, Madison and Evan, four times silver medalist. I've got personal, then, desire to see them win just because you think, Oh, gosh, poor guys. They keep coming back and they've not won it. But the judges can't have any personal attachment to it. It's just got to be, you know, this spread eagle, the outside spread eagle. That was on point in the music. Does that enhance the composition closer to the tent? Here's the choreo rhythm sequence, a similar kind of exit to the end of their Silver Samba steps to Charlene and Marco, using a lift to punctuate it. You know, they're all so similar, levels wise. Similar, I'm sure, although that said, it looks like Madison has got a level three on the midline step, but it's at level four for Evan, that one level higher than Charlene and Marco. Things like that, hugely consequential. They think they did the best that they could on this night. Let's take a look at the scores, what the judges felt. 85.61 is their season's best, and they have an 89.15 season's best. They take the lead, one team to come. Wow. Evidently, the judges felt the same way they did when they got off the ice. And that's a season's best score on the circuit. Yeah.