On a balmy Paris evening in front of 13,000 fans, athletes from the US and Japan shed a tear as they received their Olympic medals against the stunning backdrop of the Eiffel Tower on the other side of the Seine.
The ceremony at the temporary venue in the Trocadéro gardens was not to honour competitors who had excelled at this year’s Olympics, but for a handful of figure skaters from the 2022 Beijing Winter Games who had waited two-and-a-half years for their moment in the sun.
Olympic officials hope the launch of a new medal event will prove a fitting forum for athletes beaten by competitors who were later revealed to have been doping.
“We hope our situation sheds a lot of light on this battle that has gone through Olympic sports for years, and years to come,” said Brandon Frazier, a US pairs skater now in possession of a gold medal after Wednesday’s event. “Our team was just happy the right medals were given out, and we feel grateful to share this opportunity with everyone who competed fairly.”
The “re-award ceremonies” mark the Games’ latest attempt to navigate a path through the doping scandals that plague top-level events. Such claims have hit this year’s Games, with US authorities leading questions about a series of Chinese swimmers — including relay winners in Paris who failed drugs tests before the 2021 Tokyo Games.
Some of those belatedly receiving medals this week have been retired for several years, highlighting the contrast with athletes who take to the podiums fresh from winning their contests.
Wednesday’s celebrants had competed in Beijing’s team figure skating event, for which a medal ceremony never took place because of uncertainty over a rival’s disqualification. On Friday, 10 athletes were honoured, with medals won as far back as the 2000 Summer Olympics.
They included Lashinda Demus, an American female 400-metre hurdler whose silver at the London 2012 Games will be upgraded to gold after Russia’s Natalya Antyukh was disqualified in 2022 for using a banned substance. Antyukh did not appeal against the decision, according to the Athletics Integrity Unit, an independent anti-doping body created by World Athletics.
“Since accepting the silver medal . . . I have fought for the gold that was rightfully mine. As a married mother of four, I have worked relentlessly with the IOC since October 2022 for this moment of glory,” Demus wrote in an online fundraiser to help her family, including her mother who coached her in 2012, attend the ceremony.
Other athletes who received medals on Friday included Derek Drouin, a Canadian high jumper whose bronze at the 2012 games was upgraded to silver in 2021 after the disqualification of Russia’s Ivan Ukhov.
Drouin said the ceremonies were “a step in the right direction to ensuring a future where fewer athletes who dope squeeze through the cracks, so that moments don’t continue to be stolen from deserving athletes”.
The celebrations were held in Trocadéro’s Parc des Champions, which has hosted a free daily event for fans to toast medallists, enjoy music played by DJs and watch live events on jumbo screens. Many winners have taken “victory selfies” with Samsung smartphones, reflecting unprecedented levels of product placement at this year’s Games.
Martin Fourcade, president of the Paris 2024 athletes commission and a five-time biathlon gold medallist, said the setting was in part inspired by traditions from the Winter Games.
“Traditionally in the Summer Games, athletes get their medals in the stadium and their journey is almost over. At the Winter Games the situation is a little bit different,” he said.
The reallocation of Olympic medals after doping disqualifications has sometimes occurred in less grandiose settings. Adam Nelson, a US shot putter whose performance at the 2004 Athens Games was later upgraded to gold, received his medal at an Atlanta airport food court in 2013.
For the figure skaters, Wednesday’s ceremony concluded a drawn-out controversy. In February 2022, days after the team final in Beijing, IOC anti-doping authorities disclosed that Russian teenage prodigy Kamila Valieva had tested positive two months earlier for a banned heart medicine, leading to the cancellation of the medal ceremony.
Valieva had been part of team competing under the banner of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC), rather than Russia itself, because of the country’s ongoing ban over doping allegations.
After various legal appeals, the IOC in January this year elevated the US and Japanese teams to the gold and silver medals.
This year, swimmers from the UK, US and elsewhere have raised concerns about having to compete against Chinese swimmers who in 2020 tested positive for the same heart medicine used by Valieva. Chinese authorities at the time blamed a mass accidental exposure caused by a hotel kitchen, and have since dismissed the ongoing concerns.
Appeals around the figure skating medals continue. The bronze was awarded to the other ROC team members — but Russia remains banned from the Games for both state-sponsored doping in 2014 and its full-scale invasion of Ukraine two and a half years ago. As a result, the skaters have not been invited to take part in the Paris ceremony.
Russian state news agency Tass reported this week that the skaters had appealed their exclusion to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Vincent Zhou, a member of the US figure skating team awarded gold on Wednesday, said he and his teammates were determined to celebrate their moment together, despite the complicated logistics of attending the Parisian ceremony for those now busy with jobs and families.
“I left my summer internship a week early, but got all my work done,” said Zhou, now in his final year of an economics degree at Brown University. He proudly told his colleagues at a New York financial services firm: “I’m going to Paris to go get a gold medal at the Olympics.”
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