At the Olympic Summer Games, a Winter Gold at Last

PARIS — What was the U.S. Figure Skating mixed team from the Beijing Olympic Winter Games doing in Paris — in the heat of the summer?

Collecting some long-overdue hardware is what.

Nine members of that U.S. team from the 2022 Games finally received gold at the Paris Parc des Champions at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, an area of the Summer Games that has been dedicated to highlighting medal winners. But in a reallocation ceremony, the U.S. team received its medals from Beijing following a years-long controversy. In Beijing, Russia finished on top with skater Kamila Valieva, who had tested positive for a banned substance two months before the Winter Games began.

Protests were filed immediately and no medal ceremony was ever held. In July, the Court of Arbitration for Sports ruled that U.S. should be awarded the gold, as well as Japan the silver and

That left Nathan Chen, Vincent Zhou, Karen Chen, Alexa Knierim, Brandon Frazier, Madison Chock, Evan Bates, Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue as Olympic champions.

Each member got their gold medal on Paris’ biggest stage and got to hear the national anthem played as well.

“That was incredible, more than you could have ever dreamed,” Zhou said. “Everything’s come full circle now. I was sort of talking about this with my coaches last night. Worlds was like my closure to the individual event. Now this in Paris is like my closure to the team event. So now everything has closure.”

Zhou said the team had stayed tight throughout the controversy.

“This team was unique because usually there’s churn in terms of the members between Olympic cycles, but our team competed together through one or two Olympic cycles, so, four to eight years,” he said. “And we all came up together, we all experienced the same struggles, competition after competition and Olympics after Olympics. And so, going through all that and coming through it with this result is incredible for all of us.”

With athletes again testing positive on the world stage in other sports, Zhou said the U.S. team was proud of fighting for what they felt they deserved.

“Team USA’s commitment to clean sport stands strong and I’m happy to defend clean sport,” he said. “And I feel almost privileged in a way because there’s many people who deserve the same thing and won’t get it.”