Madison Chock and Evan Bates claimed a silver medal at the 2026 Winter Olympics on Wednesday following a stunning free dance routine, falling just 1.43 points behind Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron, the duo from France who took the gold.

The Americans were 0.46 points behind Beaudry and Cizeron after the rhythm dance program on Monday. They performed Wednesday’s free dance to “Paint It Black” from the dystopian sci-fi show “Westworld,” scoring 134.67, and waited for the French pair’s turn on the ice. Beaudry and Cizeron skated to the soundtrack from “The Whale” and scored 135.64, edging out the married American couple by 0.94 points in the free dance.

Beaudry and Cizeron’s total was 225.82 to Chock and Bates’ 224.39. Canada’s Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier took bronze, earning a total of 217.74.

“It’s definitely a bittersweet feeling at the moment,” Chock said after the competition. “We have had the most incredible year — 15 years on the ice together. First Olympics as a married couple. And we delivered four of our best performances this week. I think we’re really proud of how we handled ourselves here and what we accomplished.”

In the team event, for which they helped Team USA win its second consecutive gold, Chock and Bates dominated the rhythm dance and the free dance in what is their fourth consecutive Winter Olympic Games together. While they have two golds together in the team event, Wednesday’s silver is their first Olympic medal in ice dance.

Controversy behind French ice dance duo

Beaudry and Cizeron have been a pair for less than a year. Cizeron previously won gold in the ice dance event at the 2022 Winter Olympics with then-partner Gabriella Papadakis.

Cizeron needed a new partner after Papadakis retired in 2024. She has since accused him of abusive behavior, alleging he was “controlling” and “demanding,” CBS News partner BBC News reported. He countered that Papadakis had spread false information about him in a “smear campaign.”

Beaudry was born in Montreal and has spent most of her career representing Canada, but she was granted French citizenship last November. She asked Cizeron to team up after her former partner, Nikolaj Sørensen, was suspended by Skate Canada after an American skater accused him of sexual assault.

The suspension was overturned in June on jurisdictional grounds, but the case is still pending, The Associated Press reported. Beaudry has also maintained his innocence, showing her support for her former partner as recently as earlier this month.

In the Netflix docuseries “Glitter & Gold: Ice Dancing” — released on Feb. 1 that features Chock and Bates, Beaudry and Cizeron, and Gilles and Poirier — Beaudry said: “I never really publicly discuss about how much damage it’s created.”

“When they decided to suspend him, it meant that his career was over, which also meant that my career was over,” she said in the three-episode docuseries.