The 2026 Winter Olympics continue on Saturday, Feb. 14, and although Valentine’s Day is all about love, there’s some tension on this particular holiday.
Following Madison Chock and Evan Bates falling just 1.43 points shy of gold to France’s Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron in the ice dancing competition, there’s been plenty of buzz surrounding the question of whether judging is fair.
“It’s definitely a bittersweet feeling at the moment,” Chock said after the results came in, according to CBS News. “We have had the most incredible year — 15 years on the ice together.”
Chock added, “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.”
Voices were outraged after the victory for France, and some have been questioning if certain judges from home countries are bias in their final scores. Now, senior writer Jay Busbee of Yahoo Sports is weight in on the controversy. In a piece out on Friday, Feb. 13, titled “Judges are stealing figure skating’s show (and not in a good way),” Busbee questions just what’s going on at the 2026 Olympics.
“Perhaps a more rigid form of judge recusal — kicking out judges when a skater from their home nation is on the ice, for instance, would be a solid start.” He also suggests to “just go to a worldwide voting system on the phone” and says that unlike today’s Olympics, “No way that could be manipulated, right?”
Busbee adds, “The maddening aspect of all of this is that it’s welling up just as skating is enjoying a resurgence in the United States. Between the two-time gold medal-winning team, the Quad God and the Big Three, America’s Olympic figure skating looks as good as it has in decades. This isn’t the time for the sport to get mired in familiar, avoidable controversies.”
Finally, he asserts that, “Viewers deserve better. Chock and Bates deserved better. And figure skating as a sport deserves better. That’s not a judgment, that’s straight fact.”
