Olympic ice dance partners Madison Chock and Evan Bates have no plans to hang up their skates just yet.
“We’re definitely still skating. We’re actually going to get back on the ice tomorrow,” Bates, 37, said on the Thursday, August 13, episode of Shawn Johnson East and Andrew East’s “Couple Things” podcast. “We’ve taken a little hiatus, which has been really nice and needed. We haven’t skated in six weeks, which for us is like an eternity.”
Chock, 34, and Bates led Team USA to gold in the team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan. The married couple, who tied the knot in June 2024, also took home the silver in the individual ice dancing competition behind France’s Guillaume Cizeron and Laurence Fournier Beaudry.
In the months after leaving the February Olympics, Chock and Bates announced plans to take a break following their Stars on Ice performances across the United States.
“We’re a little apprehensive about how [our return to the ice is] going to go and how it’s going to feel, but we’re excited,” Bates said on Thursday. “I mean, we share this creative outlet and this passion together and, like, ice dance is so inherently romantic in a way. It’s our job to look like we’re in love on the ice, but luckily for us, we are actually in love. We’re excited to get back out there and we’re getting ready for some shows [in Idaho and Japan].”
Before Bates and Chock came back to the rink, they embarked on a “busy” hiatus.
“We’ve just been saying yes to everything that comes our way, which we normally wouldn’t because we were like, ‘No, we got to get back to training,’” Chock added on Thursday’s episode. “Right now, we’re like, ‘We’re gonna take a nice big break and just say yes to everything.’ We’ve been traveling a lot, bouncing around from L.A., Palm Springs, New York, Las Vegas and then we took a little bit of a hiatus. We took a family vacation with Evan’s family … [to] Mackinac Island, which was amazing.”
As for Bates, he stressed that taking a “post-Olympic unwind” felt necessary after their lengthy competitive season.
“Lately, it just feels like we don’t have that stress hanging over our heads anymore [and] that, kind of, thing you have in the back of your mind that you always need to get back to this pursuit and you’re always in constant competition with yourself and with your competitors,” he said. “We’re not going to compete this upcoming season and the reminder of, like, we don’t need to have that constant ball of stress is so comforting. It’s so nice and it’s new for us. It’s the first time we’ve felt that ever.”
