BEIJING — Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue have known for months that this competitive season, and these Olympics, would be their last.
And thanks to an emotional performance Monday at Capital Indoor Stadium, they’ll be going out with an Olympic medal.
In the 11th year of their partnership on the ice, Hubbell and Donohue won a bronze medal at the Beijing Games, finishing just ahead of their longtime rivals and training partners Madison Chock and Evan Bates, who came in fourth.
Then, after the performance, they took a moment to soak it all in.
“Not many people get to experience that moment,” Hubbell said, “so it would be a shame to walk away without really appreciating it.”
Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron of France won the event in dominant fashion, with Russia’s Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov taking silver. The third American team in the field, Kaitlin Hawayek and Jean-Luc Baker, finished 11th.
This is the fifth consecutive Olympics at which Team USA has won a medal in ice dance.
“I don’t think it’s proven anything that people didn’t already know,” Evan Bates said, when asked about the streak. “But I think it’s big that Zach and Maddie won the medal, and that the streak continues. Because it’s something that we are really proud of.
“The community of ice dancers in the U.S. are very proud of each other, and the legacy, and really happy that continued today.”
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For Hubbell and Donohue, it was a particularly special moment, given the length and complexity of their partnership – and the fact that they are now looking to retirement.
They first teamed up in 2011, after previously skating with different partners, and became a romantic couple shortly thereafter. A few years later, their off-ice relationship ended but they stuck together in competition.
All told, they’ve won three national championships and 16 Grand Prix medals.
“When we move our best, we’re not thinking about matching. We just match,” Hubbell said after their rhythm dance performance Saturday. “There might be a different arm here or there, but we really connect with each other’s eyes. We speak to each other through the program, with the way that we’re touching, the way that we’re looking at each other.”
Monday’s medal offered a bit of redemption for Hubbell and Donohue after they finished fourth at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games. They also won silver as part of the team competition in Beijing earlier this month.
“There’s no feeling like skating with the perfect partner,” Donohue said Saturday. “And I’ve been very fortunate to have that.”
Hubbell said the knowledge that this would be their last competitive season together helped them stay present and soak it all in, even if some people close to them wondered why they would want to embark on a public farewell tour of sorts.
“We had some people that questioned that choice and how open we were being,” she said. “But our coaches and the people around us that helped us make that choice, I think they understood that our true nature is to be very vulnerable. And they saw every day in training the proof that we were living up to what we said, which was we’re making this choice because we think it will put us in the moment – that we think it will make us appreciate every day.”
Hubbell and Donohue said the world championships in Montpellier, France in March will be their last competition together – though they don’t plan to totally leave the sport. They’re looking forward to still skating together in shows, where they can measure success in fun and creativity rather than points from judges.
This does, however, mark the end of a chapter. And they realize that.
“It’s heartbreaking to walk away, in some ways,” Hubbell said. “Skating and the things that we experienced together is irreplaceable. We’re leaving at our happiest, at our most successful, at our peak in every way.
“So it is hard to walk away, but it was right. And even the best choices can be hard sometimes.”
Contact Tom Schad at [email protected] or on Twitter @Tom_Schad.
