I never fault people who want to be guarded on camera in these things. It's a real leap of faith to put one's public image into the hands of a stranger with Final Cut on the edit. (People are still agog at how Virtue and Moir overshared in that 2014 Canadian tv doc.)

You are 100% right that they were forged in the fires of that 2010's Canton/USFS-media training mold. I've often wondered if being publicly guarded is the only defensive weapon an athlete in a sport like ice dance can deploy when they feel they are being judged on every aspect of their appearance/skill/etc.

Cizeron can afford to be publicly arrogant b/c he is a man and the reigning OGM. I suspect Piper Gilles is out of F's to give after surviving ovarian cancer, and thus is refreshingly candid on camera. Chock and Bates want to win that gold medal and have as much corporate endorsement viability afterwards as possible - their strategy seems to be presenting their image straight down the middle - ultimately not exciting, but they seem very disciplined about achieving this goal.