Before the Team USA Olympics summit in New York City last month, the decorated ice dancers Madison Chock and Evan Bates landed at JFK airport around midnight. Their call time at Manhattan’s Javits Center was seven hours later.
But it wasn’t as though they’d just hopped south from their house in Montreal, nor over from Bates’s hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan, or Chock’s native California. They were inbound from much further afield: Chongqing, China, where they had just won the top prize at a prestigious regional competition. The trip to New York took more than 24 hours but, somehow, they were awake, chipper, and refreshed in the gray convention hall. The only clue that they might be slightly fatigued came in the afternoon, when Bates said to me, “I just sat down for a second, closed my eyes, and said, ‘No, no, keep going. You can sleep later.’”
In figure skating circles, Chock, 33, and Bates, 36, are in-demand and at the apex of their careers. That sort of globetrotting is, according to one of their agents I spoke with later, “just what they do.” They won gold at the 2022 Beijing Games in the team ice dancing event and have also taken multiple world and US championships as a pair. (This coming weekend finds them in Lake Placid, New York, for 2025 Saatva Skate America.)
Yet in the universe of sports, the skating world is relatively small—and so is its fanbase. With their charisma and presence, Chock and Bates stand to broaden their profiles in Milano Cortina–especially at a Winter Games that will be running at full capacity and (hopefully) free of COVID-19 restrictions.
“This will be our fourth Olympics together,” said Bates—though their first as husband and wife. (They married in June 2024.) “I think, although the goals are really, really lofty for us, that we’ve stayed grounded in appreciation for the opportunity to compete for as long as we have. Cherishing each chance, as it comes, has been our MO. I think it’s a good mindset for us.”
Chock nodded, adding: “I really do feel like we are the most mentally settled and confident that we’ve ever been going into a Games. Our best attribute is our strength together as a couple—and how that complements the way we work together.”
When she’s not out on the rink, Chock has a burgeoning business: In 2023, she founded her eponymous costume design label after concepting, and producing, a majority of her own competitive outfits over the past two decades. She creates not only her and Bates’s uniforms, but those for other skaters—from Team USA and beyond—as well. This very much includes looks for Milano Cortina, which is now just a few months away.
“I’ve designed the costumes for the Spanish ice dance team and the Georgian ice dance team,” said Chock, “and I have [myself and Evan’s] rhythm and free dance costumes prepared already.”
“For our rhythm dance, our music is Lenny Kravitz, and the theme of the rhythm dance this year is the ’90s,” continued Chock. “I wanted to incorporate the nostalgia of that decade with some animal prints, and some chains inspired by Chanel’s runway shows at the time. And there’s also a bit of Lenny’s style, too. He’s a fashion icon. I studied his stage looks, his streetwear, and pulled together something for Evan that was inspired really by one particular outfit that Lenny himself wore. My look, too, has some Lenny also, especially with mesh–he wore a lot of mesh.”
“For our free dance, we have a flamenco-inspired program, so for the costumes we worked with a specialist who is a choreographer and director of the Spanish National Ballet,” said Chock. “I am playing the female matador, and Evan is the beast, or the bull. We do a lot of choreography in which his arms represent the horns, so I incorporated that into the design.”
“The shoulder details curve, like a bull’s horns,” added Bates. “And the chest is sort of reminiscent of a bull’s head. I absolutely love it.”
He went on: “Our costumes really put us into a mindset where we become the characters. That’s really important in figure skating. I think where Madi really excels is in her ability to combine her athletic artistry and her design artistry. And more and more people keep asking. I think there are going to be 10, 12, even more of her costume designs in Milano Cortina.”
“I would love to collaborate with other brands, just to bring more high fashion into sport,” Chock also said, referencing her love of Ralph Lauren in particular (the label is one of her and Bates’s sponsors). “The overlap has been really popular lately. You see it a lot in tennis. I think golf is going to get more of it. And figure skating, by nature, has these beautiful outfits and costumes…so I think it’d be an easy fit.”
As far as their preparation for Italy goes, Chock and Bates are staying the course. “I think you’re going to see a similar lineup of elements from us,” said Chock. “But as always, we love pushing out creativity. So you’ll also see some fun, interesting lifts from us, and of course, creative costuming.”
It’s been a challenging year in figure skating: In January, American Airlines flight 5342 crashed when it collided with a helicopter on the way to Washington’s Reagan Airport. Twenty-eight members of the sport’s community, returning to the East Coast from Wichita, Kansas, which had just hosted the US figure skating championships, were killed.
“That was an incredibly difficult time for the skating community,” said Chock. “But I think we banded together really well to support each other. And we found the family bond that is so prevalent within us. We always say it’s like a family, but that experience…it showed us that figure skating truly is. It was an unspeakable tragedy, and it still lives heavily on our hearts. So there is this even deeper honor to represent US figure skating, every day, while remembering not to take a single moment of it for granted.”