Worth the wait? Absolutely affirmative for the nine U.S. athletes who received gold medals Wednesday at the Paris Olympics, 2½ years after their figure skating team event ended at the Beijing Olympics.
The five men and four women attended a special medal ceremony in front of 13,000 jubilant fans at Champions Park in Paris. The scene was a joyful departure from what would have been a medal ceremony in front of a handful of onlookers in an indoor Chinese arena during the 2022 Winter Games dampened by COVID-19 protocols.
“That was everything,” said U.S. figure skater Alexa Knierim, whose fingernails were painted gold. “It was liberating, it was exciting, it was invigorating, it was loud.”
Against the stunning backdrop of the Eiffel Tower, the gold medals were presented to Knierim, Evan Bates, Nathan Chen, Madison Chock, Zachary Donohue, Brandon Frazier, Madison Hubbell and Vincent Zhou. Seven of eight members of the team from Japan were on hand to receive silver medals.
The medal ceremony did not take place in Beijing because of legal uncertainty following the disqualification of Russian Olympic Committee figure skater Kamila Valieva because of a positive test for the performance-enhancing substance trimetazidine.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport on July 25 confirmed the International Skating Union decision to disregard the points gained by Valieva and to rank Team USA first and Japan second. ROC will receive bronze medals, although no athletes were in Paris to accept them because the ROC is suspended from participating in these Olympics.
“I never could have imagined in my wildest dreams that we would be in Paris receiving our Winter Olympics medals,” Hubbell said. “We’re all so incredibly grateful. What a special moment for us.
“I can’t even imagine that it could be any better than sharing this with our families, so thank you so much to the IOC [International Olympic Committee] and the USOPC [U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee] and U.S. figure skating for making our dream come true.”
