They had occupied the ice dance penthouse for so much of the past four seasons, including the last three World Championships, that Madison Chock and Evan Bates might as well have been declared owners of the place.

Yet when they were ready to throw a housewarming celebration in front of the world, Chock and Bates were evicted by a couple of new kids on the block, French team Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron, whom they know as friends and train with at the same rink in Montreal.

So, the apparent end of the U.S. ice dancers’ stellar career did not include the individual Olympic gold medal that had been their goal since deciding they would try for a fourth Winter Games as competitive partners and a first as husband and wife.

Chock and Bates claimed silver after Wednesday’s free dance, adding an individual medal to the golds they won in the team event at both this Olympics and the last. They were a frustrated fourth in the 2022 ice dance event.

“It’s definitely a little bittersweet, because we are so, so happy with how we performed this week,” Chock said, her voice cracking as she continued the thought.

“We've had an incredible career, and we've been so well supported by our families and our coaches and by each other. Sometimes that's just how it shakes out. This is the story for us, and I wouldn’t change anything.”

Cizeron, meanwhile, became the first person to win ice dance gold with different partners, having done it in 2022 with Gabriella Papadakis. He and Fournier Beaudry began training together barely a year ago. She got French citizenship in November.

The French won both phases of the ice dance event, earning 225.82 points, just 1.43 ahead of Chock and Bates (224.39). Canadian team Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier were third at 217.74.

With ice dance being the most subjective of figure skating’s four disciplines and the outcome having been so close, it is understandable that there will be a lot of discussion about the judges’ scores.

The point difference between Chock-Bates and Fournier Beaudry-Cizeron in the rhythm dance segment came when a technical panel review lowered the level of one of the U.S. team’s elements, the pattern dance. In the free dance, Cizeron’s bobble on a twizzle element cost the French team some points, but the mistake was not punished as much as it seemed it might have been.

“We couldn’t have skated any better,” Chock said.  “The rest is out of our hands.”

“Sometimes you can feel like you do everything right, and it doesn't go your way,” Bates said.  “That's life, and that's sport.”

Each of the top two teams performed striking and polished free dances to very different music. Chock and Bates did a high-energy, Spanish-themed program to a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Paint it Black.” Fournier Beaudry and Cizeron flowed like quiet water, mesmerizing in their interpretation of soundtrack pieces from the movie, “The Whale.”

There was, however, some furor over the way the French team’s partnership came into being.

Fournier Beaudry’s previous skating partnership representing Canada with Nikolaj Sorensen, also her boyfriend, ended after Sorensen was banned six years by Skate Canada in 2024 for an alleged sexual assault of a U.S. skater in 2012. Sorensen has denied the allegations. The ban has since been overturned, but that action has been appealed.

Both have been criticized for publicly expressing support for Sorensen.

“From the beginning, we (he and Beaudry Fournier) tried to create a bubble where we really supported each other through everything,” said Cizeron, whose partnership with Papadakis ended in December 2024.

Bates danced around the question of whether this was their last Olympics, hesitating a long time before answering, “I’m not sure.  We certainly put all our effort and emphasis into peaking at this event... It’s really hard to say what the career plans will be.”

If Chock, 33, and Bates, who turns 37 the day after the Olympics, are indeed leaving the sport, they are doing it with grace and class.

Soon after the final scores were announced, the U.S. team went over to give their French counterparts lengthy embraces.

This is the sixth straight Olympics in which U.S. ice dancers have won medals—one gold, three silver, two bronze—after having gone 30 years without one.

And the surprising fifth-place performance of the second U.S. team, Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik, bodes well for a future without Chock and Bates.

“They have given us big shoes to fill,” Zingas said.  “They had an amazing career and so much success, especially over the last four years, and I want to be like them. I want to have that same success.  If we can take the torch and keep holding it high, that would be amazing.”

Zingas and Kolesnik startled themselves by finishing so high in their Olympic debut, with a fiery free dance to Prokofiev’s “Romeo & Juliet.”

“I mean, this is crazy,” said Zingas, who switched from singles to dance after the 2022 season.  “If you told me one year ago today, I'd be top five at the Olympics, I would have said, `No, it's a lie.’  We’ve never even been to a World Championships.’’’

They will go to their first in March. It seems unlikely that Chock and Bates will seek a fourth straight world title.

“There's so many emotions that come through after a week like this, but I think when things settle, we'll be super proud and look back on our time here and be happy with everything that was up to us. We really, really did our best.”

Philip Hersh, who has covered figure skating at 13 straight Olympics, is a special contributor to NBCOlympics.com.