It followed Madison Chock and Evan Bates around the world for nearly two years.
For 721 long, frustrating, painful and tiresome days, Chock and Bates, the reigning World ice dancing champions, faced questions about perhaps the biggest doping scandal in Winter Olympic history, a controversy that seemed to drag on with no end in sight.
And for 721 days, Chock and Bates, like so many others in their sport, in the Olympic movement, had no answers only more questions.
Just hours after Kamila Valieva, Russia’s then 15-year-old superstar, had led a Russian squad to the gold medal in the Beijing Olympic Games team skating competition, it was revealed that she had tested positive for a banned performance-enhancing drug in December 2021. Valieva’s positive test should have disqualified her and stripped Russia of the team gold medal, according to World Anti-Doping rules, making Chock and Bates and their U.S. teammates the Olympic champions.
Instead, in a controversy in which neither the International Olympic Committee, the International Skating Union, the sport’s global governing body, nor the World Anti-Doping Agency distinguished themselves, Chock, Bates and Team USA will now have gold medals around their necks instead of burdens on their shoulders.
“There was a small underlying feeling of sadness and disappointment that we didn’t get that Olympic moment (in Beijing),” Chock, a Redondo Beach native, said Tuesday. “And I didn’t realize that had been weighing on us this whole time until we got the resolution yesterday.”
The Court of Arbitration for Sport, the ultimate judicial body in international sports, banned Valieva for four years for the doping violation on Monday and ordered her to forfeit “any titles, awards, medals, profits, prizes and appearance money” after December 25, 2021, when her positive urine sample was collected.
Team USA was then elevated to gold medal status after the ISU adjusted the team competition results with Japan being awarded the silver medal.
“For clean athletes, for the legacy of clean sport, for the integrity of the Olympic movement, I think this is a landmark case, a monumental thing,” Bates said. “This is an unprecedented event where 20-something athletes left the Olympic Games without a medal that they won cleanly and … the finding by CAS brought some justice to the clean sport movement and I think clean athletes and the world will find some joy and solace in knowing that clean sport matters and the fight against doping is ongoing.”
Skating Canada officials said in a statement Tuesday that they would “consider all options to appeal this decision.” Russian skating officials have already said they have begun preparing an appeal of the relocation of the Beijing team medals.
Such appeals, some international sports figures said, could further delay the actual awarding of medals.
Not all parties impacted by Valieva’s doping violation, a drawn-out controversy and a widely criticized ISU ruling felt joy in the wake of the CAS decision. The ISU further muddied the situation by adjusting only the final team point totals but failing to reallocate the 2022 medals.
U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee CEO Sarah Hirshland, who has been in regular contact with the IOC, said she saw no direction for a delay in handing out the medals.
Hirshland said she had a “high degree of confidence and been given very clear direction that we should proceed in awarding the gold medals and that’s what we’re going to do.”
The next question of Chock, Bates and the U.S. teammates is where?
Chock, when learning of the CAS decision Monday, thought of a ceremony at this summer’s Olympic Games in Paris.
“A true Olympic medal ceremony,” she said. “Stand atop the podium at an Olympic event … surrounded by the Olympic spirit would be our dream, our dream scenario.”
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