Olympic judge who cost Madison Chock and Evan Bates gold has a history of questionable scores

It’s impossible not to love Madison Chock and Evan Bates, USA’s ice dancing duo who grew up in front of our eyes since making their debut at Sochi in 2014. We saw them begin their journey as teammates, become friends, and fall in love — with the pair getting married in 2024. It’s like something out of a Hallmark movie, except there was no happy ending in Milan.

Entering these games as the favorite to win gold, Chock and Bates were narrowly beaten in the final by the controversial French pair Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron. A duo who only came together after Fournier Beaudry’s partner (and boyfriend) was suspended by Canadian figure skating amid sexual abuse allegations, which led to Fournier Beaudry renouncing Canada, joining the French team, and vociferously defending her boyfriend.

That controversy was ugly enough without a scoring debacle, but we absolutely got one courtesy of a single French judge in the finals. Jézabel Dabois, the judge in question, not only noticeably scored Chock/Bates lower than the rest of the panel, but more critically she vastly overscored F. Beaudry/Cizeron — and has been doing so for over a year.

The website SkatingScores.com tracked not just the Olympic final, but every event leading up to the games — and it’s damning. We begin with the score from the Milan games, which shows how wildly divergent Dabois’ judging was compared with the field.

Not only did she judge the French pair 6.45 points higher than the mean, but she undervalued Chock/Bates by -7.19 — giving us a +13.64 delta favoring France over USA in the final score. This represents a staggering 6.37 standard deviation z-score difference across the event.

Five of the nine judges had Chock/Bates ahead of F. Beaudry/Cizeron, but that edge was erased by the wild swing in scoring from this one judge. While it’s a subjective sport, with natural variance in scoring — it doesn’t explain how one person saw the two performances so differently.

When we dig deeper into recent scores from this judge the whole picture of the Olympic scoring gets murkier. At the 2026 European Championships there appears to be similar bias in favor of France.

Dabois wildly over-scored the French pair in the short program, but really did damage in the free skate where she not only gave F. Beaudry/Cizeron a huge score, but dramatically underscored the two pairs who threatened them for gold. This came after seeing in short program that Italy and the United Kingdom were within striking distance.

At the 2025 Grand Prix of Figure Skating in Japan, there was more scoring inconsistency from Jézabel Dabois in the ice dance. In that event, F. Beaudry/Cizeron missed an element, and had a fall, which should have kept them off the podium, except for the fact this same judge turned in massive scores.

At the Grand Prix we had Chock/Bares overscored as well, but not to the same level as the French pair was — who were a full standard deviation in z-score over. Before that there was another event, and another questionable score from this same judge.

There has been a consistent pattern from Jézabel Dabois over multiple events of juicing scores for F. Beaudry/Cizeron in the ice dance, while filing low scores for their opponents. When it comes to the Olympic Games, in which France won gold by just 1.43 points, there is no doubt that the scoring of Dabois was the key differentiator in deciding who won the event.

While there’s no perfect way to settle scoring in a subjective, artistic sport, there should be an inquiry into how one judge has consistently seen the sport in a completely different way than the rest of the judges. It’s unfair to every athlete who spends years waiting for their Olympic moment to, at best, be evaluated by someone who sees the sport in a different light as everyone else — and at worst might be tying to influence the outcome of events.