International Skating Union defends controversial Olympic judging that denied Americans ice dance gold medal

The International Skating Union defended a judge’s controversial score that left Madison Chock and Evan Bates just short of Olympic gold earlier this week.

Chock and Bates settled for silver after Jezabel Dabouis favored Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron by nearly eight points over the three-time world champions in the free dance.

“It is normal for there to be a range of scores given by different judges in any panel and a number of mechanisms are used to mitigate these variations,” the ISU said, adding it has “full confidence in the scores given and remains completely committed to fairness.”

Chock called for judges to be vetted for the sake of transparency. 

“It would definitely be helpful if it’s more understandable for the viewers, to just see more transparent judging and understand … what’s really going on,” she told CBS News.

“I think it’s also important for the skaters that the judges be vetted and reviewed to make sure that they are also putting out their best performance,” she continued. “Because there’s a lot on the line for the skaters when they’re out there giving it their all, and we deserve to have the judges also giving us their all and for it to be a fair and even playing field.”

Chock later said she and Bates would “consider” an appeal.

“I think skating is such a subjective sport, but I do think that for fairness it is good when the judges are reviewed for their work. Not just after this competition but every competition to just make sure there’s a fair and even playing field for all athletes,” Chock told Access Hollywood.

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“We did everything we could. We wouldn’t have changed a single thing about our performance — or any of our performances or how we approached the week. We’re super proud of the work that we put in — we left no stone unturned, so we can leave the Games feeling satisfied and accomplished with ourselves.”

Chock and Bates were trailing the French couple by 0.46 of a point entering the free dance Wednesday night, and they were searching for their first ice dance Olympic medal with hopes that it would obviously be gold. But the judges decided the French duo did enough to defeat the Americans in the end.

Dabouis’ margin was so large that if her score were removed from the equation, Chock and Bates would have won gold.

Many critics have called the system overly confusing and still too subjective, and more than 14,000 people had signed a Change.org petition by Friday asking the ISU and IOC to investigate the latest scoring controversy.

Fox News’ Jackson Thompson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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