Evan Bates and Madison Chock | Beijing 2022 Olympic Profile

Team USA Ice Dance partners Evan Bates and Madison Chock celebrate 10 years of skating together and discuss the lessons learned on the path to their third Olympics.

Video Transcript

MADISON CHOCK: Hi, I'm Madison Chock.

EVAN BATES: And I'm Evan Bates and I skate with Madison Chock for a whopping 10 years now.

MADISON CHOCK: Yes, we've been to two Olympic games together, Sochi and Pyeongchang. We love making creative material. I think that will really show in our programs this season as hopefully it has in the past as well. But we're very proud of the material that we've put together for the Olympic season.

EVAN BATES: Yeah and I would say you know, what we've learned through the pandemic, I think it's been-- gosh, it's been nearly two years now that we've been going through this as a collective group, as you know humanity. And I feel like what I've learned is just you know to lead with empathy and to really consider what it's like for people who are less fortunate than we are.

I mean, we were off the ice for some time and we did have our own struggles in 2020 but it pales in comparison to what so many others went through. And I think you know, it seems like we're getting finally to the other side of it now. And we're so looking forward to skating.

MADISON CHOCK: I think over the last four years Evan and I have really changed as people a lot, completely different than who we were four years ago going into the games. Our mindset is different. We're definitely the strongest that we've ever been mentally, physically, and together as a couple.

So that's really been wonderful to push ourselves in new ways to grow. And through the pandemic, there were many challenges and many moments where we found new ways to train, new ways to support each other. And we learned so much about ourselves and about what we need to be successful.

And it turned out to be doing less than we thought was necessary, which was a really interesting lesson to just find what was essential to us, and to work on honing that and just making sure we get what we need but we're not overdoing it.