Two American ice dancing pairs are within striking distance of gold after the first half of their Beijing Olympics competition, but they have some ground to make up for the top spot.

In the rhythm dance portion of the event Saturday in Beijing, Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue placed third while fellow Americans Madison Chock and Evan Bates were close behind in fourth. Medals will be on the line Monday in the free dance.

France’s Gabriella Papadakis and Guillaume Cizeron broke their own world record in the rhythm dance with a score of 90.83 to lead the way. Russia’s Victoria Sinitsina and Nikita Katsalapov came in second with 88.84 points.

Hubbell and Donohue, who won the rhythm dance section of the team event (in which France did not compete), registered a score of 87.13 on Saturday. They narrowly missed a medal in the 2018 Olympics, finishing fourth overall.

Chock and Bates, the 2022 U.S. champions who won the free dance section of the Olympic team event, were not quite as sharp on Saturday, earning a score of 84.14. The duo finished eighth overall in the 2014 Olympics and ninth overall in the 2018 Olympics.

Chock fought to hang onto a significant bobble during the midnight blues sequence, and their Level 2 marks for their midline step left them playing catchup for a medal.

“Our score was a bit lower than we hoped,” Chock said. “We need to look at the protocol and see where we lost some levels. That’s probably where it was. But yeah, it’s not over yet.”

The two American teams are already assured of at least one medal from Beijing after helping take silver in the team event last week. That could eventually be upgraded to gold depending on the outcome of a Russian doping inquiry.

Alexandra Stepanova and Ivan Bukin, who were late arriving to Beijing and did not take part in the team event, were the first to post a real target for everyone else Saturday night. The Russians scored 84.09, just off their season best set at the European championships, to their pop mashup of The Backstreet Boys, Shawn Mendes and Justin Bieber.

The lead lasted through Britain’s Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson and until Papadakis and Cizeron took the ice.

The four-time world champions showed why they have been nearly unbeatable during the past four years, losing only once, at the 2020 European championships. With sharp edges and crisp turns, Papadakis and Cizeron seemed to float across the ice of the historic Capital Indoor Stadium, finally breaking through what had been some stingy scoring.

“I think we’ve been waiting for four years now, but then the last, you know, a couple days, couple of hours, couple of minutes, you know, then it was flight time,” Cizeron said. “And once we were in the air, you know, everything disappeared and there was just, you know, momentum.”

A third American pair, Kaitlin Hawayek and Jean-Luc Baker, finished 11th in the rhythm dance with a score of 74.58.

The free dance to decide the medals is scheduled for Monday.

— With AP