US Ice Dance: Slimmest of Margins

By the slimmest of margins, Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue took the gold in ice dance, defeating silver medalists Maia and Alex Shibutani and bronze medalists Madison Chock and Evan Bates at the 2018 U.S. National Figure Skating Championships on Sunday in San Jose, Calif. Only a half of a point separated the three teams atop of the podium in ice dancing.

“My mind always works like a flashback,” Donohue, 27, said. “There’s always things that weren’t good enough, so that’s what comes to mind (at the end of the performance). This was a culmination of everything.”

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“Today we had a mistake in the diagonal,” Maia acknowledged, “but we have a lot to be proud of, and we have a lot of time to keep pushing ourselves.”

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“I think we’ve improved a lot over the past year,” Bates said. “This week, we would love to have a different result, but the message we are trying to convey on the ice is connecting with people, and that’s an even more important thing. I wouldn’t say it’s frustration, as much as knowing what we need to work on. The short dance is where there is a deficit, and that’s what we are going to work on over the next four weeks.”

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“Last year we had a fall on the lift, and we also had a fall on the twizzle,” Baker said, “so we missed two of our eight elements in terms of our score. This year, we made the free dance the same as last year, and we made some tweaks. We really wanted to show people and the fans of the U.S. how we’ve been training.”

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What are your thoughts on the ice dance competition?

I thonght the judging of the free dance was quite accurate. To me, the Shibutanis were flat. Their OD was much better, and has been throughout the season.

Between Chock & Bates and Hubbell & Donohue, I could go either way. Two very different performances, each enchanting in its own way. I think I would give a slight nod to C&B (as did the judges) due to the fact that their Free Dance is such a departure from the programs of previous years.