Chock and Bates Gear Up for First Competition in Nearly a Year with Same Motivation but New Perspective

These days, Madison Chock and Evan Bates are able to look back on the end of their 2019-20 season with the perspective afforded by nearly nine months of shutdowns, social distancing and wearing masks.
 
Coming off a win at the 2020 Toyota U.S. Figure Skating Championships – their second U.S. title, won five years after their first – the duo won the Four Continents Figure Skating Championships and figured to challenge for what would be their first World title.
 
Then the pandemic hit and, instead of welcoming the ISU World Figure Skating Championships to their training base of Montreal, they headed into lockdown.
 
Looking back, the moment is so much bigger than what they individually were dealing with.
 
"The pandemic has affected everyone, like literally everyone," Bates said. "So I think to say there was some getting over it we had to do is certainly true, but so many people have had stuff canceled."
 
"Certainly in the grand scheme of things, it's not the most important thing," Chock added of Worlds getting cancelled. "It's a big deal to us, because it's our world and it's what our lives have been centered around for such a long time. But it really gave us a new perspective on things."
 
At the time, however, it wasn't quite so easy.
 
"We're speaking now months after it. We were definitely very bummed for a few weeks," Bates said.
 
Their coaches Marie-France Dubreuil, Patrice Lauzon and Romain Haguenauer at the Ice Academy of Montreal gathered the skaters together to have a meeting and give everyone a bit of closure. Lockdown began the next day, and Chock and Bates spent three and a half months off the ice.
 
After a few weeks off, they began attending Zoom classes set up by their coaches and weekly Zoom meetings with the other skaters in the school. They also devoted more time to pursuing their hobbies – Bates played a lot of guitar, while Chock began drawing portraits.
 
And like many people, living in this strange new world had them reflecting on their own lives.
 
"It really put into perspective how lucky we are to be able to do what we do and travel on a monthly basis in our normal schedule before COVID," Chock said. "We were able to look and see all of those incredible things that we're so fortunate to be a part of, and to do, and then to have it not taken away, but just kind of postponed for the unforeseeable future, was very different. And it kind of makes you look inward more instead of being so focused on a goal that you're accomplishing and chasing after."
 
"It gave us time to sort of reflect by way of pausing everything," Bates added. "It's Madi's third, my fourth Olympic cycle. We've been skating together for a decade, and more time has passed in our careers than is left to go. That much is not contested. So just thinking about that, and then realizing that competitions now are not a sure thing. They can be canceled a few weeks out, and you just never know in the near future what's happening. So now I'm looking forward so much to competing. I'm going to be so happy to have the opportunity to compete knowing that we don't have infinite years left, and these competitions are becoming rarer and rarer now. It's the reality. And so it's nice to know where we are and what we want to accomplish still, and we're hopeful that we'll have the opportunity to go and try to reach those goals."
 
So when they returned to the ice this summer, it was with a new appreciation for what they do, even when suffering through the sore ankles, calves and shins that came with getting back into on-ice training.
 
The lack of travel has also fostered a new bond with their training mates, which include their top U.S. competitors, Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue, and Kaitlin Hawayek and Jean-Luc Baker.
 
"It's really brought us so much closer together with our skating family here at the school," Chock said. "Usually we're all traveling at this time of year, and we see each other coming and going, but we're all together training. And when there was that little sweet window during the summer where things weren't in lockdown and kind of opening up again and you could see people, we had a really great little summer, and were able to spend more time with our friends here, which is rare."
 
Chock did suffer a concussion in July, keeping her off the ice for several weeks and setting back the pair's progress. They decided to withdraw from 2020 Guaranteed Rate Skate America in October because they weren't feeling as prepared as they normally would like to be for a competition.
 
Chock and Bates will make their season debut at the 2021 Toyota U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Las Vegas. The ice dance competition will be held on Jan. 15-16.
 
It will be their first competition since February 2020.
 
"Thinking back on that, it seems like such a long time ago," Chock said with a laugh. "Things are going great. We're super happy to be training, we're very motivated, and we know that competitions will resume, and when they do, we're going to be ready, and that's what we're focused on."
 
Even with no competitions on their calendar for nearly a year, Chock and Bates have not struggled to keep themselves motivated. And even with the future still uncertain, they have no lack of goals.
 
"We want to perform even better than we have in the past," Chock said. "We want to win a World title. We want to win at the Olympics. We want to win another U.S. title. So we have big goals, and we're ready to accomplish them. We're just going to keep working hard, and stay focused on our path."
 
And regardless of whether there are competitions or not, whether things return to normal or not, Chock and Bates are simply motivated by their love for what they do.
 
"We just like skating a lot," Bates said. "That's kind of the intrinsic motivator that does not change with the competition schedule. We're able to just look at the positive side of getting to do what we really are passionate about, getting to do it together, being healthy and active, dancing, interpreting music, being artistic, and then competing eventually when it comes back.
 
"We're certainly still looking forward to chasing those kind of objectives, but really, we just enjoy what we do, so that's our motivation."