Andrea and I were watching the ice dance competition Wednesday and caught the magnificient performance of Madison Chock and Evan Bates.
I may not know much about sports and that certainly includes any Winter Olympic events taking place on the ice but what Chcok and Bates did out there at the Milano Cortina Olympics looked pretty damn flawless to me.
It also looked flawless to the commentators on TV and the judges awarded them a very high score that reflected that assessment.
It looked like Madison Chock and Evan Bates had a date with destiny and a gold medal.
Instead they got a silver medal.
What the...?
Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron of France performed next and got a slightly higher score to vault them ahead to 1st place.
Again, I know little about any ice thingy happens at the Olympics, be it skating or dancing or whatever but what Beaudry and Cizeron did out there looked... OK, I guess? Their performance was proficient and nobody fell down but I didn't feel the same spark I felt watching Chock and Bates out on the ice.
The commentators on TV seemed to feel the same way.
Imagine all our surprise when the judges saw something different, something imperceptibly better.
In the hours and days since that performance, there has been quite the uproar.
There's a petition on Change.org calling for the International Skating Union to review the scoring.
Well, God bless whoever's trying to make that happen but I think that ship has sailed.
Madison Chock and Evan Bates have been gracious about the whole thing.
Madison said of this outpouring of support, “It really means a lot to us to have so many people just appreciate our performance and what we’ve worked so hard for.”
Madison said she and Evan are at peace with what they did on the ice and the results of that performance. “A medal is a medal, the Olympic dream is alive, and it’s not something that is tangible. It’s something that lives within us, and really is the driving force for our motivation and intrinsic goals. And I think that’s what’s special about the Olympics. And that’s a real win for us.”
No matter the color of the medal, gold, silver or bronze, the Americans still got something that had eluded them in 3 previous Olympics, a win in ice dance.
The Olympics are a roller coaster of emotions. Imagine being recognized as being better than 99.9% of the world at something and still feeling a bitter sting of defeat anyway.
That's way more pressure than I would ever want to deal with.
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