Worth the wait? Absolutely affirmative for the nine American athletes who received gold medals Wednesday at the Paris Olympics, 2½ years after their team figure skating event ended at the Beijing Olympics.
The five men and four women attended a special medal ceremony before 13,000 cheering fans at Champions Park in Paris. The scene was a joyous farewell to what would have been a medal ceremony before a handful of spectators in an indoor Chinese arena at the 2022 Winter Games, which was tempered by COVID-19 protocols.
“That was it,” said American figure skater Alexa Knierim, whose nails were painted gold. “It was liberating, it was exciting, it was invigorating, it was loud.”
Against the beautiful backdrop of the Eiffel Tower, the gold medals were awarded to Knierim, Evan Bates, Nathan Chen, Madison Chock, Zachary Donohue, Brandon Frazier, Madison Hubbell and Vincent Zhou. Seven of the eight members of the team from Japan were present to receive the silver medals.
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The medal ceremony did not take place in Beijing due to legal uncertainty following the disqualification of Russian Olympic Committee figure skater Kamila Valieva after testing positive for the performance-enhancing drug trimetazidine.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport on July 25 upheld the International Skating Federation’s decision to disregard Valieva’s points and place Team USA first and Japan second. ROC will receive bronze medals, although no athletes were in Paris to receive them because ROC is suspended from participating in these Olympic Games.
“I never in my wildest dreams could have imagined that we would be in Paris receiving our medals from the Winter Olympics,” Hubbell said. “We are all so incredibly grateful. What a special moment for us.
“I can’t imagine anything better than sharing this with our families, so thank you very much to the IOC [International Olympic Committee] and the USOPC [U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee] and American Figure Skating for making our dream come true.”
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
