Russia dropped from first place to third after Valieva was suspended for four years and her Olympic results were disqualified, but since Russia is not allowed at the Paris Olympics due to the war in Ukraine, their skaters will not be allowed at the medal ceremony and will receive their bronze medals elsewhere, probably in Russia at some later date.
All nine skaters on the U.S. team, their coaches and several members of each of their families flew to Paris on Tuesday courtesy of the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee.
Medal ceremony outfits have been made for the Americans by the USOPC, which the skaters will wear at the Paris Olympics’ Champions Park for the ceremony beginning at 5 p.m. Wednesday.
“It’s so magical that we get this opportunity,” Nathan Chen, who also won the gold medal in the men’s figure skating competition at the 2022 Olympics, said in a phone interview Tuesday after arriving in Paris.
Then, alluding to all the stops and starts over the past 30 months in this bizarre international doping scandal, Chen added slyly, “Obviously, it hasn’t happened yet, so I’ll check back with you once it’s happening.”
While the Valieva saga deprived the American and Japanese skaters of their moment on the podium at the 2022 Olympics, and the wait has been an annoying series of twists and turns, there is a silver lining to this gold-medal finale in France.
“What better place to get a medal than Paris?” said Chen, who has graduated from Yale since those Olympics and is heading into a post-grad program this fall.
Had the Americans received their then-silver medals when they were supposed to in Beijing, they would have been given them in the eerie isolation of Beijing’s COVID Olympics. They would have been wearing masks, and they would have been all alone except for their teammates. None of their families and friends were allowed to travel to China for those Games due to the stringent COVID restrictions at the time.
“My parents didn’t get to share the Beijing (men’s gold) medal with me so it’s cool to be able to have this alternative that now allows us to have a chance to have my family in attendance,” said Chen, who said his “whole family,” 10 in total, is with him in Paris.
“I’m really excited for the team, I’m excited to have this opportunity, I’m excited to share this with my family. For me, it’s just joy, glad that we get to have this opportunity. Given the situation, I’m happy that we’re able to have this opportunity just to share with our friends and family and of course the team. That’s really cool.”
On Feb. 7, 2022, Chen and his teammates won the silver medal behind Valieva and the Russians, and ahead of then-third-place Japan. The next day, they were getting ready for the medal ceremony in Beijing when it was abruptly called off, throwing the results of the competition into disarray, when the then-15-year-old Valieva was found to have tested positive for the banned heart medication trimetazidine (TMZ) six weeks earlier at the Russian championships.
After many months of dithering and delays, mostly by Russian officials, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruled against Valieva in January 2024, paving the way for the U.S. team to move up to the gold medal.
However, that wasn’t the end of the story. The Russians filed three appeals of that decision with CAS — one from the Russian Olympic Committee, another from the Russian figure skating federation and the third from the six skaters who comprised the Russian team.
As the weeks wore on, there was concern that if CAS did not rule on the appeals in time, the Paris medal ceremony could not take place, leaving the skaters without their medals for who knew how much longer.
Finally, less than two weeks ago, on the day before the Paris Olympics' opening ceremony, CAS dismissed all three Russian appeals and the figure skating medal ceremony was on.
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They say good things come to those who wait – and the wait has certainly been worth it for the USA’s figure skating team.
At the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, the U.S. finished second behind the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) in the team event, with Japan coming third.
However, after Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva had a doping test come back positive for the performance-enhancing substance trimetazidine, no medals were awarded until the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) handed down a decision to disqualify Valieva of “all competitive results” achieved since her positive test.
CAS handed Valieva – who was only 15 at the time of the positive test – a four-year ban, which was accompanied by a re-ranking of medal positions in the team event where the ROC fell to third, with the U.S. and Japan moving up to first and second respectively.
Team members Nathan Chen and Madison Hubbell told CNN’s Coy Wire that the pain of being denied their moment on the podium in Beijing, where there were no fans or families due to the spread of the omicron variant of COVID-19, has now been replaced with joy.
Video below: Controversy surrounds Kamila Valieva's doping case
Hubbell said that “missing out on the medal moment with our families and our friends” hurt the most back in 2022.
But instead of receiving their medals in front of empty stands, the team had their golds placed around their necks at a packed Champions Park in the Trocadéro Gardens, a stunning location at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.
Loud chants of “USA, USA, USA” came from the sizeable contingent of Americans in the stands as the skaters were awarded their medals.
A huge roar then went up as they held their bouquets aloft and waved to the crowd.
The Japanese team members - who were awarded their silver medals alongside the USA and emerged from the tunnel with beaming smiles while doing the conga - stepped off the platform to allow the Americans to have their moment.
“Now, we get to celebrate it at an even greater stage,” Hubbell said ahead of Wednesday’s medal ceremony. “I never could have imagined in my wildest dreams that we would be in Paris receiving our Winter Olympics medals.
“We’re all so incredibly grateful. What a special moment for us. I can’t even imagine that I 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.”
Chen admitted that “it’s been so long” since Beijing that he can’t remember what he was thinking at the time the Valieva news broke.
“But I’m so excited to be here,” he said. “The Beijing team in Paris; it’s a great feeling to be here.
“It’s amazing. We also didn’t have family in Beijing, so to be able to have our families here, to be able to have all of our friends at this grand celebration, it really means a lot to us.”
The 2022 United States Olympic figure skaters finally experienced the feeling of having a gold medal placed around their necks — nearly 2 1/2 years after their winning performance at the Winter Olympics in Beijing.
The team received its medals during an Aug. 7 ceremony in Champions Park during the 2024 Paris Olympics. Those U.S. figure skaters are Nathan Chen, Vincent Zhou, Karen Chen, Alexa Knierim, Brandon Frazier, Madison Chock, Evan Bates, Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue.
The team cheered and the crowd chanted “U-S-A!” as the figure skaters got their medals, and then they waved their bouquets of flowers as the U.S. national anthem played in Paris.
The athletes had been involved in an unprecedented Olympics controversy for over two years. When the team competed in Beijing, it initially finished behind the Russian Olympic Committee, earning the silver medal in February 2022.
But shortly after the event, there was an investigation into then-15-year-old Russian athlete Kamila Valieva, who tested positive for a banned substance two months before the Winter Games began.
The investigation meant that the athletes could not be awarded their medals at the podium for the first time in Olympic history.
Nearly 30 months later, on July 25, 2024, the U.S. figure skaters learned they would receive gold medals in Paris. Read on to learn more about the controversy surrounding the extended wait for their medals and how they ended up in first place.
The team released a statement on Instagram Feb. 2, 2023, that said its athletes were “deeply frustrated by the lack of a final decision in the Team Event.”
“They have long deserved the recognition that has been withheld due to the ongoing process,” the statement continued. “U.S. Figure Skating calls for a fair and appropriate ruling to rightfully award medals to all clean sport athletes affected by this situation.”
The post included a picture of all nine athletes displaying empty medal cases.
The team shared a similar disappointed sentiment on June 23, 2023, as it marked 500 days since the scheduled medal ceremony.
“500 days. Nine empty boxes. No medals,” the team captioned a post that showed the empty medal boxes in an exhibit at the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum.
U.S. figure skating team members Alexa Knierim, Brandon Frazier and Vincent Zhou joined TODAY in June 2023 and spoke about waiting for a decision.
“It felt like a stain on the history of figure skating and the Olympics,” Zhou told TODAY’s Hoda Kotb. “It reflects poorly on the integrity of sport in the Olympics in general.”
He added, “We aren’t being told much. There’s been a shocking lack of transparency and communication, not just to the public, but to the athletes themselves.”
Following years of waiting for answers, Team USA confirmed on Jan. 30, 2024, that the figure skating team would receive gold medals instead of silver.
In a statement shared on its website, the U.S. figure skating team said “the International Skating Union announced its reorder of the medals, based on the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s decision to ban Valieva, then 15, for four years dating back to Dec. 25, 2021. The reorder, affected by the loss of Valieva’s points in the team event, is now: Gold, United States; Silver, Japan; Bronze, ROC, which dropped from first to third.”
But, there was still one more step after the Russian Olympic Committee filed an appeal. NBC Olympics reported on July 25 that the Court of Arbitration for Sport dismissed the ROC’s appeal.
Team USA celebrated the final decision on Instagram, applauding the figure skating team for responding to the situation “with dignity and humility in their fight for clean sport and a level playing field across all Olympic sports.”
On Aug. 7, Team USA received its gold medals — its first gold in the Olympic team event, according to U.S. figure skating — in Champions Park.
They say good things come to those that wait – and the wait has certainly been worth it for the USA’s figure skating team.
At the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, the US finished second behind the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) in the team event, with Japan coming third.
However, after Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva had a doping test come back positive for the performance-enhancing substance trimetazidine, no medals were awarded until the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) handed down a decision to disqualify Valieva of “all competitive results” achieved since her positive test.
CAS handed Valieva – who was only 15 at the time of the positive test – a four-year ban, which was accompanied by a re-ranking of medal positions in the team event where the ROC fell to third, with the US and Japan moving up to first and second respectively.
Team members Nathan Chen and Madison Hubbell told CNN Sport’s Coy Wire that the pain of being denied their moment on the podium in Beijing, where there were no fans or families due to the spread of the omicron variant of Covid, has now been replaced with joy.
Hubbell said that “missing out on the medal moment with our families and our friends” hurt the most back in 2022.
But instead of receiving their medals in front of empty stands, the team had their golds placed around their necks at a packed Champions Park in the Trocadéro Gardens, a stunning location at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.
Loud chants of “USA, USA, USA” came from the sizeable contingent of Americans in the stands as the skaters were awarded their medals.
A huge roar then went up as they held their bouquets aloft and waved to the crowd.
The Japanese team members - who were awarded their silver medals alongside the USA and emerged from the tunnel with beaming smiles while doing the conga - stepped off the platform to allow the Americans to have their moment.
“Now, we get to celebrate it at an even greater stage,” Hubbell said ahead of Wednesday’s medal ceremony. “I never could have imagined in my wildest dreams that we would be in Paris receiving our Winter Olympics medals.
“We’re all so incredibly grateful. What a special moment for us. I can’t even imagine that I could be any better than sharing this with our families, so thank you so much to the IOC (International Olympic Committee) and the USOPC (US Olympic and Paralympic Committee) and US Figure Skating for making our dream come true.”
Chen admitted that “it’s been so long” since Beijing that he can’t remember what he was thinking at the time the Valieva news broke.
“But I’m so excited to be here,” he said. “The Beijing team in Paris; it’s a great feeling to be here.
“It’s amazing. We also didn’t have family in Beijing, so to be able to have our families here, to be able to have all of our friends at this grand celebration, it really means a lot to us.”
CNN’s Homero De la Fuente and Andrew McNicol contributed to this report.
PARIS — Finally. At long last.
In a ceremony at Paris's Champions Park, near the Eiffel Tower, members of the U.S. figure skating team were honored with Olympic gold medals.
The ceremony Wednesday — at the Paris Summer Olympics — followed two years of controversy and legal wrangling sparked by a doping scandal at the 2022 Beijing Winter Games involving star Russian skater Kamila Valieva.
During those Olympics, Valieva led her Russian team to a gold medal win with a masterful performance. After Valieva competed, however, it was revealed that she had tested positive for a banned performance-enhancing drug in the months before the Winter Games.
Nine Americans were granted the gold medal win, after a final ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport last month upheld a four-year ban for Valieva while disqualifying her Beijing performance.
During a packed outdoor ceremony a crowd cheered, held up American flags and chanted “USA! USA!” as the names of the nine American athletes were read out.
Those honored are Evan Bates, Karen Chen, Nathan Chen, Madison Chock, Zachary Donohue,, Brandon Frazier, Madison Hubbell, Alexa Knierim, and Vincent Zhou.
Members of Japan's figure skating team, which originally placed third, were also honored at the ceremony with the silver medal. Russia, which fell from first to third, was not present to receive the bronze medal.
