Canada's Gilles, Poirier sit 2nd after rhythm dance at figure skating world championships
CBC
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.
