“We love what we do and we loved it every step of the way,” exulted Guillaume Cizeron after he and Laurence Fournier Beaudry had prevailed by an instep, 225.82 to 224.39.
What was more surprising than Chock and Bates losing was that the French couple had been together for less than a year.
When Cizeron, the first man to win gold with different partners, collected silver in 2018 and then gold four years ago, he did it alongside Gabriella Papadakis, with whom he won five world crowns.
Had they remained together they likely would have been favored again. But their partnership ended unamicably two years ago amid what could mildly be described as irreconcilable differences.
“The idea of being alone with him terrifies me,” Papadakis told a French interviewer last month. “His coldness chills me to the bone.”
Cizeron, who claims that Papadakis was running a smear campaign against him, connected last March with Fournier Beaudry, whose Danish partner Nikolaj Sorensen was banned by Skate Canada for at least six years for alleged sexual maltreatment of an American skater.
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Fournier Beaudry and Sorensen, who also competed for Denmark, were never top contenders. But with Cizeron, she quickly was transformed into a potential champion. She received French citizenship in time to be eligible for the Olympics.
“Neither of us would have thought we’d be here today,” Cizeron said when they arrived in Italy. “So everything is like a bonus for us.”
Still, winning gold seemed a reach. Chock and Bates have been together since 2011 and this was their fourth Games. After just missing the podium in Beijing they since came to full flower as a couple (they married two years ago).
Up against rivals who competed for the first time in August, the reigning global champs looked to have an undeniable advantage.
But they also were getting up-close updates about their French rivals’ rapid progress because they train with them in the same Montreal rink under the same coaches — Marie-France Dubreuil, Patrice Lauzon, and Romain Haguenauer.
Only three other couples — Jayne Torvill-Christopher Dean, Natalia Bestemianova-Andrei Bukin, and Oksana Grishuk-Evgeni Platov — had won three consecutive titles coming into the Games and all of them had their superiority confirmed.
Of the four gold medals that the US delegation was favored to win at these Games coming in, the dance seemed the surest. Chock and Bates contributed the maximum 20 points to the cause as the Americans won the team title last weekend by a single point over Japan.
But the one they craved was the individual gold, which only one US couple (Meryl Davis and Charlie White in 2014) had won.
Even after the French outpointed them in Monday’s rhythm dance, the Americans were sanguine. They’d beaten Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron in the Grand Prix Final in December. They beat them again in the rhythm dance in the team event.
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All they had to do, Chock and Bates figured, was perform their imaginative free dance the same way they usually do.
“The game is always on,” Chock said. “You should know us by now. We’re not changing anything. We got this locked in. We know ourselves, we know our routine, we got it.”
Their flamenco-flavored free dance to ‘Paint It Black,’ in which Chock plays a matador to Bates’s bull, was spellbinding with inventive and precise lifts and no evident glitches.
It didn’t seem that the French, skating to the soundtrack to ‘The Whale’ with an emphasis on ease and flow, could top that. But they did by carving out a tenth of a point here and there with a deliberate and elegant program.
That’s where dancing differs from singles and pairs skating. There are no jumps, no throws, and few opportunities for mishaps that make for obvious deductions.
Both couples had the same base technical score of 46.79. Where the French prevailed was on grades of execution — how well each element is performed — and on component marks for composition, presentation, and skating skills.
“It’s definitely a bittersweet feeling at the moment,” said Chock. “We have so much to be proud of. We’ve had the most incredible career, 15 years on the ice together, first Olympics as a married couple, and we delivered four of our best performances this week. I’m really proud of how we’ve handled ourselves and what we’ve accomplished here.”
John Powers can be reached at john.powers@globe.com.