Redemption is a key element of sport. That moment of “play again?” keeps us -- players and spectators alike -- engaged, wondering if the result will be different the next time and then the time after that. We saw it with Simone Biles a few months back when she returned from a devastating showing at the Tokyo Olympics to capture historic national and world titles in gymnastics, with hopes (at least my hope) that she might return to the Olympic stage this summer in Paris. Mikaela Shiffrin crashed -- literally -- out of the Beijing Olympics two years ago, only to return to a historic World Cup season, cementing her status as the greatest alpine skier ever to grace the world’s slopes (and we wish her well in her recovery from last week’s brutal crash in Cortina).
And now the U.S. figure skating team -- Evan Bates, Karen Chen, Nathan Chen, Madison Chock, Zachary Donohue, Brandon Frazier, Madison Hubbell, Alex Knierim, and Vincent Zhou -- have been awarded the 2022 Team Skating gold medal, redemption that has been almost two years in the making.
The win comes after the Court of Arbitration for Sport finally retroactively disqualified Russian skater Kamila Valieva from the Beijing Winter Games for violation of anti-doping rules, installing a four-year ban from the sport backdated to December 25, 2021, which makes all of her results since -- including the Olympics -- null and void. As she was part of the gold-medal winning Russian team figure skating squad, the results for that event have now shifted: the U.S. takes gold, Japan silver, and Russia’s score remains good enough without Valieva to stay on the imaginary medal podium for the bronze. Team Canada, who finished fourth two years ago, has stated that it is “extremely disappointed” in the International Skating Union’s interpretation of the CAS decision, and will “consider all options to appeal.”
And a quick side note: the Russian skating team wasn’t actually the Russian skating team because Russia was banned for its systemic doping program, which meant that the athletes could still compete but not under flag or anthem, which was kind of strange because during Opening Ceremony the Russian-not-Russian team wore the Russian flag on their jackets.
Got it? Great -- back to our story.
Back in February, 2022, the International Olympic Committee failed to hold a medal ceremony for the team skating event because of questions surrounding a positive test linked to Valieva, then just 15 years old and without question a generational skater. She was linked to a positive test that had happened a full month before Opening Ceremony, yet another example of Russia’s corrupt sport system, which, again, faces relatively little impunity for its breach of sportsmanship, fair play and the rules in order to land historic quads and dominate medal podiums while robbing others not only of their rightful medals, but also, in this case, their rightful medal ceremonies.
So, two years later, is this decision enough? Who can say? Beijing already saw redemption on the ice for U.S. figure skater Nathan Chen, who finally secured his long-awaited gold medal in men’s singles, landing five beautiful quadruple jumps in stark contrast to his disappointing 5th place finish four years earlier in PyeongChang.
Now, with the CAS decision finally finalized, redemption has come for Team USA writ large, although without the pomp and circumstance that comes with an Olympic medal ceremony in the moments that follow a competition. And while “Gold Medals for everyone!” is always exciting, it is perhaps especially redemptive for Chen’s teammate, Vincent Zhou, who had announced his withdrawal from individual competition in Beijing in the saddest Instagram post in history after testing positive for Covid. Now he, too, gets gold, perhaps making up in some small way for the skate he never got to perform, and once again showing us all that truly, magically, anything can happen in sport.
Amy Bass is professor of sport studies and chair of the division of social science and communication at Manhattanville College. Bass is the author of ONE GOAL: A COACH, A TEAM, AND THE GAME THAT BROUGHT A DIVDED TOWN TOGETHER, among other titles. In 2012, she won an Emmy for her work with NBC Olympic Sports on the London Olympic Games.
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