Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue pose for a portrait on the "TODAY" show set on Feb. 21, 2018 in Gangneung, South Korea.
Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue weren’t going to let a medal slip away this time.
The reigning U.S. ice dance champions started Saturday in second place at the world championships in Milan, and delivered on their technically difficult free dance to "Across the Sky (Instrumental)" by Rag'n'Bone Man and "Caught Out in the Rain" by Beth Hart to score a personal best 116.22.
That gave them another personal best overall score of 196.64, and the duo finally had their first world championship medal, winning the silver. This was their fifth appearance at worlds. They were in third place at last year’s competition after the short dance, but Donohue fell during the free dance and they finished in ninth.
Similarly, at the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang, Donohue stumbled during the free dance and they finished in fourth place.
Standing atop the podium in Italy was 2018 Olympic silver medalists Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron, of France, who set new world record marks in both the free dance, their 123.47 beating their own record set at the Olympics last month, and overall score of 207.20, beating Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir’s gold-medal winning score of 207.28 from the same Games.
Two-time Olympians Madison Chock and Evan Bates, who won the bronze medal at the world championships in 2016 and silver in 2015, finished fifth with a score of 187.28.
Performing their free dance program to an arrangement of John Lennon’s “Imagine” for the first time since an unfortunate fall in PyeongChang, Chock and Bates delivered an impassioned performance and scored a season’s best 187.28.
Kaitlyn Hawayek and Jean-Luc Baker, who replaced Maia and Alex Shibutani after the Olympic bronze medalists withdrew, finished 10th at their senior worlds debut with a score of 165.28.
Karen Price is a reporter from Pittsburgh who has covered Olympic sports for various publications. She is a freelance contributor to TeamUSA.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.
