The Winter Olympics figure skating competition wrapped up this week with a controversy so predictable you could’ve written the headline before the music started. Team USA’s Madison Chock and Evan Bates — three-time world champions, flawless performance, everything on the line — finished with silver. France’s Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron took gold.
And the margin of victory? A French judge named Jezabel Dabouis, who scored her country’s skaters nearly eight points higher than the Americans in the free dance.
Eight points.
If you removed her score from the equation, Chock and Bates would’ve won gold. But you can’t remove it — because the International Skating Union says everything’s fine, the system works, and there’s nothing to see here.
More than 14,000 fans have signed a Change.org petition demanding an investigation. The ISU issued a statement Thursday night that essentially said, “Judges disagree sometimes, it’s normal, we have full confidence.”
Cool. Great. Moving on.
This Isn’t Judge Dabouis’s First Rodeo
Here’s where it gets fun.
Last year, at the Grand Prix of Figure Skating in Japan, Beaudry and Cizeron missed an element and had a fall — the kind of mistakes that usually keep you off the podium entirely. Dabouis gave them a superb score anyway. They took silver.
She also had a wide scoring margin favoring France in the Olympic rhythm dance earlier in the week.
So this wasn’t a one-time thing. This was a pattern — visible, documented, and apparently completely acceptable to the people in charge of figure skating’s integrity.
The Americans Are Asking for “Transparent Judging” — Which Seems Reasonable
Chock told CBS News it would be “helpful if it’s more understandable for the viewers, to just see more transparent judging.” She added that judges should be “vetted and reviewed” to ensure fairness.
Bates said they delivered their “absolute best performance” and it “felt like a winning skate.”
They’re not demanding a recount. They’re not throwing tantrums. They’re asking — politely, professionally — for the system to make sense.
And the ISU’s response? Silence on specifics. Confidence in the process. Business as usual.
The Last Time This Happened, They Changed the Entire Judging System
The most famous judging controversy in Olympic figure skating also involved a French judge.
At the 2002 Salt Lake Games, Marie-Reine Le Gougne was found guilty of misconduct after allegations of vote-swapping and selling of votes. The Canadian pair Jamie Sale and David Pelletier were eventually elevated to gold, while the Russian pair kept their medals.
Two years later, the ISU eliminated its 6.0 judging system entirely because of its “inherent subjectivity.” They replaced it with the current system — technical scores plus component scores — which was supposed to fix this exact problem.
And yet here we are, 24 years later, watching a French judge hand gold to France while the governing body insists everything’s fine.
The French Skaters Arrived Under a Cloud of Controversy
Beaudry and Cizeron weren’t exactly skating into Milan-Cortina with clean backstories.
Fournier Beaudry’s boyfriend and former skating partner, Nikolaj Sorensen, was suspended in 2024 following allegations of a 2012 sexual assault. He denied the accusations, and his six-year suspension from Skate Canada was eventually overturned on a technicality — but the scandal effectively ended his competitive career.
Cizeron, meanwhile, is facing explosive claims from his former gold-medal-winning partner, Gabriella Papadakis, who described him as “controlling, demanding and critical” in her memoir. She wrote that she felt under his “control” and was “terrified” of being alone with him.
Cizeron called it a “smear campaign” and is pursuing legal action.
So the gold medalists are dealing with assault allegations and memoir bombshells — and the judging scandal is somehow the cleanest part of the story.
What Happens Next? Probably Nothing
There’s no recourse for Chock and Bates if the ISU refuses to investigate. The governing body has issued its statement. The medals have been awarded. The French judge is standing by her scores.
One social media user summed it up: “This is a judging scandal. There aren’t many times in sports where several times over it seems to be rigged… Chock and Bates (and others) got robbed.”
American figure skater Ellie Kam called her compatriots “true champions” on Instagram.
And the ISU? Still confident. Still committed to fairness. Still not investigating.
The Predictability Is the Worst Part
Figure skating judging controversies are as old as the sport itself. The subjectivity, the national bias, the impossible-to-explain score gaps — it’s all baked in.
But when a French judge scores France eight points higher than Team USA, and that’s the margin of victory, and the governing body says “this is normal” — it stops being about subjectivity and starts being about credibility.
Chock said it best: “Any time the public is confused by results, it does a disservice to our sport. I think it’s hard to retain fans when it’s difficult to understand what is happening on the ice.”
People need to understand what they’re cheering for. They need to feel confident in the sport they’re supporting.
And right now, 14,000 of them are signing petitions because they don’t.