US Olympic figure skating team finally gets its golden moment in shadow of Eiffel Tower

PARIS — What started in disgrace exactly two and a half years ago in the cold and darkness of a dismal Beijing COVID winter ended Wednesday in delight at the foot of the Eiffel Tower under a sparkling Parisian summer sky.

The right team received the Olympic gold medal. The team that cheated wasn’t there. The wait, the excruciatingly long wait, actually turned out to be worth it.

As the Eiffel Tower rose over the shoulders of the nine American gold medalists — the entire 2022 U.S. Olympic figure skating team — families, friends and spectators gathered around a runway inside Champions Park, roaring with joy.

“Absolutely, it was definitely worth the wait,” U.S. team co-captain and ice dancer Madison Chock said, her 2022 gold medal around her neck. “I could never in my wildest dreams have imagined that we would get our Winter Olympic medal at the Summer Olympics in Paris let alone underneath the Eiffel Tower. Paris is one of my favorite cities ever since I was a little girl so this is a dream come true in many ways.”

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This was of course the glorious end of the Kamila Valieva doping saga, the Russian scandal that forced the original medal ceremony to be canceled and triggered an infuriating series of international delays and appeals, finally ending with a Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruling less than two weeks ago that paved the way for Wednesday’s unique celebration.

In marched the Japanese, who had finished third in Beijing but moved up to second after the then-15-year-old Valieva was suspended for four years and her results disqualified. Then came the Americans, rising from second to first, in their USA blue. The Russians, who dropped from first place to third, were not there. They were not allowed to be here since no Russian athletes are allowed to be at the Paris Olympics due to the war in Ukraine. Unfortunately Canada, which had a strong argument that it deserved to be third, lost a CAS appeal last week and was the odd team out.

How different this moment was from what would have happened had a medal ceremony been allowed to go on in Beijing. The Americans would have received those medals in eerie isolation, wearing masks, their families and friends forbidden from traveling to China for those Games due to the stringent COVID restrictions of the time.

But now, here they were, the U.S. delegation of skaters and coaches and families and friends 100 strong, U.S. Figure Skating CEO Tracy Marek said.

“Paris is what the athletes asked for in this situation,” she said, “and we’re so proud of their dignity, their grace and how they’ve handled themselves through the last two and a half years, so to be able to celebrate in Paris with them is just so special.”

Two and a half years is a long time in the lives of young athletes, so much so that all but two of the U.S. skaters have retired from competition since the 2022 Winter Olympics.

“Beijing does seem like a long time ago especially because a lot of our lives have changed since,” said men’s skater Vincent Zhou. “Many people retired. People got married.”

Zhou is one of three still in school. He has another year and a half left at Brown. Men’s singles gold medalist Nathan Chen graduated from Yale this spring and is heading into a post-grad program this fall. And women’s skater Karen Chen has another year to go at Cornell.

Most of the rest are now coaching, including ice dancer Madison Hubbell, who got married and had a baby since the 2022 Olympics.

The only two still competing are Chock and her partner, co-captain and new husband Evan Bates. They have won two ice dancing world titles since Beijing, and are planning to go to the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy.

Bates has competed in four Olympics and Chock in three, but until Wednesday, neither had ever won an Olympic medal.

"I’ve grown up watching Olympians get on the top of the podium and sing the national anthem and get the gold medal and then it just all hit me,” Bates said. “It was just so emotional.”

“We were both tearing up,” Chock added.

Time and again over the past two and a half years, Chock and Bates were called upon to keep the team informed about the latest delay or setback and speak to the media on their behalf.

Now there were no more delays, no more setbacks. They were Olympic gold medalists.

“The first time we’ve been all in the same place in over two years was this morning when we all got picked up from the hotel and driven (to Champions Park),” Bates said. “The day has just been an absolute dream.”

Follow Christine Brennan on social media @cbrennansports

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: US Olympic figure skating team finally gets 2022 Beijing Games gold