Madison Chock and Evan Bates pulled off a rare feat in top-level ice dancing — reclaiming a national title at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.
Chock and Bates, two-time Olympic partners, became the first U.S. skater, couple or pair to go five years between national titles in many decades. They clinched it in Saturday’s free dance with an Egyptian snake performance to distance two-time defending champions Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue.
“It feels longer than five years,” Chock said.
The margin of victory: 4.67 points, the largest in U.S. ice dance since Meryl Davis and Charlie White completed their dominant run in 2014. Chock and Bates led by 1.32 after Friday’s rhythm dance.
They returned atop the podium after finishing second or third at the last four nationals. A second act like this can be hard to come by in ice dance, where the longstanding politics of judging most come into play. Once couples fall out of favor, they usually stay there.
The U.S. Championships conclude Sunday with the men’s free skate in Greensboro, N.C., live on NBC Sports.
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Chock and Bates came out of the Sochi Olympics as the top U.S. couple, succeeding Davis and White. But they dropped behind both Hubbell and Donohue and Maia Shibutani and Alex Shibutani going into the PyeongChang Olympics (where they placed ninth).
After that, Chock underwent ankle surgery. The couple moved from Michigan to Montreal. They now train with Hubbell and Donohue, U.S. bronze medalists Kaitlin Hawayek and Jean-Luc Baker and world champions Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron.
“The trajectory for our skating right now is great,” Bates said. “Our mindset is right. Our coaching team is right. Our connection is as strong as ever, and we’re going to keep riding it.”
Hubbell said she and Donohue came out of their first free dance element, a spin, in the wrong direction. That caused them to continue facing the wrong way for their next four elements.
“The rotational lift, there’s a large leg flair that looks very cool going the opposite direction,” Hubbell said. “Today, I just opened my crotch right in front of the judges.”
Internationally, Chock and Bates and Hubbell and Donohue rank fourth and fifth in the world by best scores this season. A U.S. couple earned a medal at 10 of the last 11 world championships, but no gold since 2013.
Make it two potentially landscape-altering ice dance results on Saturday. Papadakis and Cizeron were beaten at the European Championships, their first loss to a couple other than retired Canadians Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir since December 2014.
“I’m hoping that it has a surge of fans,” Hubbell said of that result, “because there’s nothing more boring than knowing the outcome before it happens.”
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Follow @nbcolympictalkAs a reminder, you can watch the events from the 2019-20 figure skating season live and on-demand with the ‘Figure Skating Pass’ on NBC Sports Gold. Go to NBCsports.com/gold/figure-skating to sign up for access to every ISU Grand Prix and championship event, as well as domestic U.S. Figure Skating events throughout the season. NBC Sports Gold gives subscribers an unprecedented level of access on more platforms and devices than ever before.
Mikaela Shiffrin has said one of her career dreams is to win in every discipline in one season. She is now one victory shy of realizing it.
Shiffrin earned her 66th World Cup victory — and her second in three days — at a super-G in Bansko, Bulgaria, on Sunday.
She prevailed by .29 of a second over Italian Marta Bassino and .70 over Swiss Lara Gut-Behrami. Gut-Behrami, the last skier other than Shiffrin to win a World Cup overall title back in 2016, earned her first podium in exactly one year.
“Perfect weekend for me,” said Shiffrin, who moved one shy of recently retired Austrian Marcel Hirscher for third place on the World Cup career wins list. “The whole team is excited about the whole weekend, but especially today.”
She is en route to a fourth straight World Cup overall title. And she is a combined victory away from wins in all five disciplines in one season. Only Marc Girardelli, Petra Kronberger, Janica Kostelic and Tina Maze have done it.
“The thing that I’m most proud of right now is that I know how to win in slalom, [giant slalom], super-G and downhill, which I never expected that would really happen,” she said.
Shiffrin struggled with confidence during a winless stretch in early January, trying not to compare herself to last season, when she won a record 17 times. She still leads the men’s and women’s tours with six victories this season, a little more than halfway through.
“Every race is such a big fight, and I haven’t been the one on top of this fight every time,” she said. “Certainly I’ve been like sometimes the expectations that I have or that other people might have, I’m not quite living up to that. Sometimes it’s hard not to feel like I’m failing sometimes, even though this is still just an incredible season.”
There are two combined races left this season for Shiffrin to achieve the dream — Feb. 23 in Switzerland and March 1 in Italy. While combined — mixing a speed run and a technical run — might seem perfect for Shiffrin, she has one victory in four starts in the discipline between the World Cup and Olympics.
And Shiffrin is careful about her race schedule. She is undecided on entering a downhill and super-G next weekend at the 2014 Olympic venue in Russia.
“After this weekend my brain is a little bit dead,” she joked.
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Follow @nbcolympictalkMELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — It made sense to Sofia Kenin that Coco Gauff would be the one getting all of the attention and generating all of the buzz.
That’s only natural when Gauff is 15 and making tennis history time and time again.
“Yeah, I mean, the hype is for her. She’s obviously done great stuff, of course. It’s absolutely normal. Just (tried) not to let that get in my head,” Kenin said. “Of course, I didn’t do it for the hype. I did it for myself, because I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it.”
Well, Sofia, you did it. Now get ready for the spotlight to shine your way. Kenin stopped Gauff’s latest Grand Slam run by beating her 6-7 (5), 6-3, 6-0 in the Australian Open’s fourth round on Sunday.
AUSTRALIAN OPEN DRAWS: Men | Women
Like Gauff, Kenin is a young — although, at 21, not quite as young — American and she reached her first major quarterfinal with the victory.
“I want to show who I am, show my best tennis, show why I’m there, why I belong,” the 14th-seeded Kenin said. “I’m doing that.”
In her previous match, the 67th-ranked Gauff beat Naomi Osaka to become the youngest player in the professional era to defeat the reigning women’s champion at the Australian Open. At Wimbledon last year, Gauff became the youngest qualifier ever at that tournament, beat Venus Williams in the first round and made it all the way to the fourth.
Entering Sunday, Gauff was 8-2 in Grand Slam action, with her only losses to women who have been ranked No. 1 and own multiple major titles: Simona Halep (at Wimbledon) and Osaka (at the U.S. Open).
Hence the aforementioned hype.
“I couldn’t really write this,” Gauff said. “I don’t think anybody could really write how this past (several) months have gone.”
She did not play as well as she has been this time, though, winding up with 48 unforced errors, more than twice as many as Kenin’s 22.
Gauff’s power is impressive. One tiny indication: She slammed a forehand into the net so hard that it dislodged a piece of a sponsor’s white plastic sign.
Kenin can’t copy that.
But thanks to her relentless ball-tracking and a bit of in-your-face attitude with a racket in hand, Kenin surged up the WTA rankings from 52nd to 12th in 2019 while winning her first three tour-level singles titles plus a couple in doubles.
“She definitely put a lot of balls in the court,” Gauff said. “She’s quick.”
Gauff’s play dating to Wimbledon catapulted her to fifth in U.S. Olympic singles qualifying, but she has half the points as fourth-place Madison Keys, and a country can’t qualify more than four players in singles. The Olympic field will be determined by the WTA rankings after the French Open in June.
Gauff said she will play “maybe three tournaments” before the French. She is limited to one more tournament in the next month and a half until she turns 16, per age rules.
“[The Olympics] is definitely the goal,” Gauff said. “Hopefully I can get my ranking up and qualify. … It’ll be difficult. I’m going to try as hard as possible. I definitely do want to play the Olympics.”
Just before Gauff announced herself last season, Kenin delivered her own breakthrough at the French Open by upsetting Serena Williams to get to the round of 16 at a major for the first time.
Now Kenin has taken another step.
Wasn’t easy, though.
After double-faulting twice in the tiebreaker to drop the opening set — “For sure, nerves,” Kenin acknowledged — she immediately tilted things the other way, breaking in the initial game of the second and never letting that lead slip away.
When it ended, appropriately enough, on a missed backhand by Gauff, Kenin dropped her racket at the baseline and covered her face as tears welled in her eyes.
“Anyone would get pretty emotional for the first time,” said Kenin, who next faces another woman making her Slam quarterfinal debut, 78th-ranked Ons Jabeur of Tunisia.
Jabeur was a 7-6 (4), 6-1 winner against 27th-seeded Wang Qiang, who surprised Serena Williams in the third round.
The wins for Kenin and Jabeur ended at about the same time, and the future opponents soon found each other cooling down side-by-side on exercise bicycles.
Kenin laughed as she described the scene this way: “She’s like, ‘Good job.’ I’m like, ‘You, too.’ It was fun, a funny moment. She’s like, ‘Are you feeling tired?’ ‘No, I’m good.’ She’s like, ‘Yeah, me, too.’ I’m like, ‘OK. I’ll see you on Tuesday, then.’”
Also advancing to a quarterfinal showdown were No. 1 Ash Barty — trying to become the first Australian to win the nation’s Grand Slam tournament since the 1970s — and last year’s runner-up in Melbourne, Petra Kvitova.
Reigning French Open champion Barty moved on with a 6-3, 1-6, 6-4 win against No. 18 Alison Riske of the United States, who double-faulted on the last point.
Kvitova, a two-time Wimbledon champion, was down a set and a break before coming back to defeat No. 22 Maria Sakkari 6-7 (4), 6-3, 6-2.
“I love Petra,” said Barty, who lost to Kvitova in Australia a year ago, “but let’s hope she doesn’t break my heart.”
In men’s fourth-round action, defending champion Novak Djokovic moved into a matchup against No. 32 Milos Raonic. Roger Federer was scheduled to play during the night’s last match against unseeded Marton Fucsovics, with the winner to face 100th-ranked Tennys Sandgren of the United States.
Raonic, the 2016 Wimbledon runner-up, was asked whether he thinks Djokovic, who owns 16 Grand Slam titles, eventually will catch Federer, who has 20.
“I just hope,” Raonic replied, “I can stop him at this one.”
Sandgren reached his second quarterfinal in Melbourne, reprising his 2018 feat by coming out on top in a physical, contentious encounter with No. 12 Fabio Fognini of Italy 7-6 (5), 7-5, 6-7 (2), 6-4.
Sandgren ended it with a marvelous drop volley to cap a 26-stroke exchange, then took a bow.
“I was expecting a fight,” Sandgren said. “And a fight we had.”
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