Chock & Bates capture dance title; Jessica Calalang captures silver medal; Nathan Chen dominates at US Figure Skating Championships

Evan Bates and Madison Chock topped the field for dance pairs in the US Figure Skating Championships.

The scorching performance of Madison Chock and Evan Bates in the free dance competition of the US Figure Skating Championships shows that they may be the dance team to be reckoned with when they compete at the World's in March.

The couple never broke character or had a misstep as they danced to Egyptian snake charmer music in front of an enthusiastic audience in Greensboro, N.C. Saturday (Jan. 25).

“It was a good night,” said Chock, who is of Hawaiian and Chinese heritage. “We are very happy to be back in Greensboro, and we had a great skate tonight. We performed, and that was our goal, to have a good performance. We really enjoyed ourselves, and we are just so thrilled.”

Defending champions Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue finished in second, followed by Kaitlin Hawayek and Jean-Luc Baker. 

“It feels longer than five years,” Chock said of the last time she and Bates won the US title in 2015. “So much has changed, and other than us, so much has changed, as well. We are in a really good place and we couldn’t be happier with how this season is going. We worked so hard to get to this point in our careers and we feel so strong and confident.

"At this point, there is still room for more growth. I am happy we can share this moment with some of our best friends and training mates, so it’s really special,” said Chock.

Chock and Bates, a couple off the ice as well, have been to the past two Olympics, finishing eighth in Sochi and ninth in Pyeongchang. They are on the verge of making this season their best. They haven't been worse than second in 2019-20.

In the men's figure skating competition, there is no doubt the man to beat is Nathan Chen as he gave a dominating performance for his short program.

The 20-year-old Yale University sophomore topped the competitors with a score of 114.13, which broke his own scoring record. The next-closest to Chen was Jason Brown, who earned a  distant 100.99 followed by Andrew Torgashev, who notched 97.87.

Vincent Zhou scored 94.82 to capture the fourth spot narrowly beating out Tomoki Hiwatashi who received a score of 94.21.

The US men's figure skating competition will finish with their long program performances  this evening.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the competition so far is the pairs performance of Filipina American Jessica Calalang and her partner Brian Johnson.

In just their second year together, Calalang and Johnson won the free skate with 146.01 points for a total score of 213.57. It was good enough to vault them to second place, as the eventual winners, Alexa Knierim and Chris Knierim, who held on to win their third U.S. pairs’ title, edging Calalang and Johnson by only 2.58 points after holding a 10-point lead over their training partners after the short program.

Calalang and Johnson vaulted to second from fourth place after short, when Johnson fell on the side-by-side triple Salchows.

In the free skate, however, they received positive grades of execution on every element. The crowd inside the Greensboro Coliseum was on their feet before their performance music even finished.

“I don’t think either of us have had that kind of performance at a U.S. Championships,” Calalang said at a press conference afterwards.

“I definitely haven’t,” Johnson added. “The amount of audience support that I felt at the very end of that program was overwhelming. It was the most amazing thing I’ve felt on the ice. I don’t have words to describe it.”

Pairs skaters Jessica Calalang and Brian Johnson surprised with their silver medal performance.

Now, Calalang and Johnson could join the Knierims at the world championships in March. The US has two berths to worlds, up from one last year. US Figure Skating chooses the teams, not necessarily (but usually) following nationals standings.

For Chock and Bates, the next stop is the World's Figure Skating Championship that will be held in March in Montreal, where they also train.

“We train with the French every day, and we know how good they are,” added Bates when asked about competing against Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron as they lost to the Russians today. “But you never know what is going to happen. Ice dance is a strange sport in some ways, it can be unpredictable, based on what the panel looks like.”

On Friday, 14-year old Alysa Liu successfully defended her women's figure skating title but because of her young age, she is not old enough to compete at international competitions.