

Christine Brennan   | USA TODAY Sports
NBC's 'TODAY' show at the Olympics is one big party
USA TODAY Sports goes behind the scene of NBC's 'TODAY' show in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

GANGNEUNG, South Korea — It is not often that a dance team ends up falling in a heap on the ice, but that’s exactly what happened to the accomplished American team of Madison Chock and Evan Bates on Tuesday in the Olympic ice dance long program.

Disaster struck as the 2015 U.S. national champions were about to get into their combination spin, with Bates picking Chock up, then setting her skate back down on the ice, and then, skates tangled, both of them fell flat on the ice.

They got up and finished well, but their well-received “Imagine” program, choreographed by the great Christopher Dean, ended not in triumph, but in tears on the ice. They finished ninth overall.

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“Everybody’s looking at us like we’re injured puppy dogs,” Bates said. “I think we just clicked blades entering the spin and it’s really impossible to spin with that kind of friction. One moment things were going exactly how we wanted them to and the next moment, in a flash, disaster struck. There’s no other way to put it.”

Both were fighting back tears, Chock moreso.

“It’s just so fresh,” she said. “I’m really proud of how we recovered and got up and just still can’t believe it happened. As soon as it happened, I said, ‘My God, our butts are on the ice where our skates are supposed to be.’ We’ve worked so hard this season to kind of reinvent ourselves.”

Said Bates: “To be positive and to look on the bright side, we got up and we recovered really well. We finished the program with a lot of emotion and the response from the audience at the end was really great.”