The one thing that American figure skaters Madison Chock and Evan Bates insisted upon when they were approached about a behind-the-scenes documentary from Netflix chronicling their road to the Milan Cortina Olympics was authenticity.
The three-time and reigning ice dance world champions were not about fabricating drama. They refused to be actors in some theatrical production. Chock and Bates would participate only if the cameras gave the world an unvarnished glimpse into their world.
“We wanted to be true to us,” Bates explained to The Associated Press, “and our relationship, and tell our story.”
Good thing there is plenty of drama already built into the high-stakes, high-pressure world of competitive figure skating.
Chock and Bates, the favorites to win gold when the Winter Games begin next week, are among three ice dance teams that Netflix followed over the past year to create “ Glitter & Gold: Ice Dancing, " which premiers Sunday on the streaming platform.
Their biggest rivals for the podium in Milan are the other two teams in the three-part series.
One is Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier, the five-time and reigning Canadian champions, who finished second to Chock and Bates at the world championships last year. The other is the new team of Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron — he won gold at the 2022 Beijing Olympics for France with his former partner, Gabriella Papadakis.
The team behind “Glitter and Gold” includes director Katie Walsh and showrunner Giselle Parets, who were behind the award-winning documentary “Simone Biles Rising,” which followed the U.S. gymnast in her preparation for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
“They came to our apartment. They followed us to various competitions throughout the year. We felt a really good connection with the producer and the film crew,” Bates said, "and we got really comfortable with them.
“I think that's an important facet of this, putting your trust in someone who is going to tell your story in an authentic way, and not manufacture anything. We wanted to be true to ourselves and our relationship and tell our story.”
Chock and Bates have quite a story to tell.
They've been partners since 2011, after Bates had been to his first Olympics with former teammate Emily Samuelson, and have won basically everything in the sport besides individual gold at the Winter Games. After finishing fourth in Beijing, they have claimed the past three world titles, run their streak of U.S. titles to a record seven, and have dominated the Grand Prix circuit.
They do have an Olympic gold medal, albeit from the team event with the rest of the American squad in Beijing.
Anything less than ice dance gold in Milan would be a disappointment.
“I think we’ve changed so much as people over the years that our experience will undoubtedly be different this time," said Chock, who married Bates in June 2024. "Just what we’ve learned, how we’ll handle ourselves under pressure, how we’ll enjoy the moment — there’s a lot to look forward to but a lot of experience to guide us as well.”
Gilles and Poirier have been nipping at the heels of Chock and Bates for years, and the Canadians have proven they can beat them on their best day. But the wildcard is Beaudry and Cizeron, who only paired up together last March.
Beaudry finished ninth for Canada at the Beijing Games with her former partner, Nikolaj Sørensen. But when he was banned by Skate Canada for a minimum of six years for “sexual maltreatment" — a punishment later overturned on jurisdictional grounds — she went in search of a new partner. Cizeron wound up being available after Papadakis had stepped away from competition.
Together, Beaudry and Cizeron swept their two Grand Prix events, won the European championships and finished second to Chock and Bates at the Grand Prix Final; Gilles and Poirier were fourth there behind the British team of Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson.
Cizeron then added another layer of drama to the Olympic ice dance competition when he recently accused Papadakis of spreading lies about him in her new book, “So as Not to Disappear.” In it, Cizeron's ex-teammate accused him of being a “controlling” and “demanding” partner, and expressed a feeling of “being under his grip” over their years together.
So much for needing to manufacture drama for “Glitter and Gold: Ice Dancing.”
“We had a really good experience,” Bates said of the documentary. “It was something at first it was hard to believe it was happening, and it was going to be on such a big platform like Netflix. But I think the opportunity is just unbelievable, not just for the sport but to document this time in our lives, our last competitive year most likely, and to have them behind the scenes.”
AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
Gold medal winners France's Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron, compete in the Ice Dance Free Dance, during day four of the ISU European Figure Skating Championships in Sheffield, Saturday, Jan. 17, 2026. (Danny Lawson/PA via AP)
NEW YORK (AP) — Financial markets are churning on Friday as investors try to figure out what President Donald Trump’s new nominee to lead the Federal Reserve will mean for interest rates. The initial reactions were uneasy because of the uncertainty.
U.S. stocks fell, with the S&P 500 down 0.8% in midday trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 507 points, or 1%, as of 1 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1% lower.
The value of the U.S. dollar, meanwhile, climbed but only after swiveling a couple times following Trump’s nomination of Kevin Warsh. And some of the wildest action was again in precious metals markets, where the price of gold screeched lower following its stellar run over the last year.
Whoever leads the Fed has a big influence on the economy and markets worldwide by helping to dictate where the U.S. central bank moves interest rates. Such decisions lift or weigh on prices for all kinds of investments, as the Fed tries to keep the U.S. job market humming without letting inflation get out of control. Trump has been pushing for lower interest rates, which usually help goose the economy but can also cause higher inflation.
A fear in financial markets has been that the Fed will lose some of its independence because of Trump. That fear in turn helped catapult the price of gold and weaken the U.S. dollar’s value over the last year.
The longtime assumption has been that the Fed can operate separately from the rest of Washington so that it can make decisions that are painful in the short term but necessary for the long term. To get inflation down to the Fed's goal of 2%, for example, may require the unpopular choice to keep interest rates high and grind down on the economy for a while.
The big question is what Warsh's nomination, which still requires approval from the Senate, means for the Fed's independence.
Warsh used to be a governor on the Fed’s board, so investors are familiar with him. That could also mean Warsh is familiar with and hopes to continue the institution of the Fed as an independent operator. And while with the Fed, Warsh criticized the central bank's buying of bonds to keep interest rates low.
Some on Wall Street took Warsh's nomination as an encouraging signal for a still-independent Fed that will keep rates high, if necessary.
But Warsh has also recently been critical of the Fed’s current chair, Jerome Powell, and has voiced support for lower rates.
“Indeed, Warsh is not the Fed’s guy, he is Trump’s guy, and has shadowed Trump on monetary policy almost every step of the way since 2009,” according to Thierry Wizman, a strategist at Macquarie Group. “This doesn’t necessarily mean that Warsh will push the Fed into rate cuts soon,” but it could indicate he may be quicker to do so when the time comes.
On Wall Street, stocks of metals miners tumbled as the price of gold dropped 8.9% to $4,878.80 per ounce. Gold's price has suddenly run out of momentum following a tremendous rally where it roughly doubled over 12 months. It topped $5,000 for the first time on Monday and got near $5,600 on Thursday.
Silver, which has been on a similar, jaw-dropping tear, fell even more. It plunged 23.5%.
Prices for gold and other precious metals had been surging as investors looked for safer places for their money while weighing a wide range of risks, including a potentially less independent Fed, a U.S. stock market that critics say is expensive, political instability, threats of tariffs and heavy debt loads for governments worldwide.
The dramatic halt in momentum may have been inevitable given how far and how fast metal prices had surged over the last year. Nothing goes up in price forever.
Friday's drops for metals prices helped send the stock of miner Newmont down 10.9%. Freeport-McMoRan, another miner, dropped 8.4%.
Apple was the heaviest weight on the S&P 500 after sinking 1.4%, even though the iPhone maker reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected.
Helping to limit the market's losses was Tesla, which rose 4.3%. It bounced back after dropping on Thursday despite delivering better profit reports for the latest quarter than analysts expected.
In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury held at 4.24%, where it was late Thursday. It got near 4.28% in the overnight and early-morning hours before falling back. A rise in a bond's yield indicates that its price is weakening.
Yields may have felt some upward pressure from a report released Friday showing U.S. inflation at the wholesale level was hotter last month than economists expected. That could put pressure on the Fed to keep interest rates steady for a while instead of cutting them, as it did late last year.
In stock markets abroad, indexes rose in much of Europe following a mixed performance in Asia.
Stocks rose 1.2% in Jakarta after the CEO of Indonesia’s stock market, Imam Rachman, resigned Friday. Stocks had stumbled there in prior days after MSCI, an influential company in the investment industry that creates stock and other indexes, warned about market risks such as a lack of transparency.
Anthony Spina, left, works with fellow options traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
A person stands in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
Currency traders work near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), right, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Jan. 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
Currency traders pass by a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), right, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Jan. 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
A currency trader talks on the phone near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), top center, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won, top center left, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Jan. 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
A man walks past an electronic board displaying stock prices and Jakarta Stock Exchange Composite Index, at the Indonesia Stock Exchange in Jakarta, Indonesia, Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana)
