Summary
The 2018 team event gold was won by Canada, with the Russian Olympic Committee placing second, and the United States placing third. Canadian 2018 Olympic champion Eric Radford returned, but this time he competed with a new partner Vanessa James.
In 2022, the Russian Olympic Committee (competing under its own flag, not Russia's, and hence hereafter abbreviated as "ROC") entered the team event as the favorite, with the United States, Canada, and Japan also expected to be in medal contention. [3] [4] The ROC decided to enter their top skaters for both the short program and free skating and initially won the event nine points ahead of the United States, who initially took silver, while Japan initially won the bronze medal. [5]
The medal ceremony originally scheduled for Tuesday, 8 February, was delayed over what International Olympic Committee (IOC) spokesperson Mark Adams described as a situation that required "legal consultation" with the International Skating Union. [6] Several media outlets reported on Wednesday that the issue was over a positive test, held in December 2021, for trimetazidine by the ROC's Kamila Valieva, [7] [8] which was officially confirmed on February 11. The results are pending investigation. [9] The Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA), under suspension from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) since 2015 [10] for its years of serving solely to hide the positive doping results of Russian athletes, [11] [12] cleared Valieva on February 9, a day after the December test results were released, two months after the test. The IOC, WADA, and International Skating Union (ISU) are appealing RUSADA's decision. [13]
On February 14, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruled that Valieva should be allowed to compete in the women's single event, deciding that preventing her from competing "would cause her irreparable harm in the circumstances", though her gold medal in the team event was still under consideration. The favorable decision from the court was made in part due to her age, as minor athletes are subject to different rules than adult athletes. [14] [15] The IOC announced that the medal ceremony would not take place until the investigation is over and there is a concrete decision whether to strip Russia of their medals. [16] As of 22 March 2024, the medals of the team event have not been awarded.
In mid-November, WADA requested that CAS take up the review of the Valieva case with an eye towards a 4-year suspension of Valieva, which would exclude her from competition at the next Winter Olympics, and to rescind her first-place performance at the previous Beijing Olympics because, "the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) did not meet a WADA-imposed Nov. 4 deadline to deliver a verdict on Valiyeva's case." [17]
Under IOC rules, the medals will be awarded as if it was a reallocation ceremony. Based on the exhaustion of all appeals, the IOC could hold the ceremony at Mediolanum Forum during the 2026 Winter Olympics (the preferred time per IOC rules would have been at the Gangneung Ice Arena during the 2024 Winter Youth Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, which, however, have already passed), the IOC headquarters or Olympic Museum in Lausanne, or the 2024 World Figure Skating Championships, scheduled for Centre Bell in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
On 29 January 2024, the CAS disqualified Valieva for four years retroactive to 25 December 2021 for an anti-doping rule violation they found her to have committed. [18] On 30 January 2024, the ISU, among other actions, reallocated medals in the 2022 Winter Olympics figure skating team event, upgrading the United States and Japan to gold and silver while downgrading ROC to bronze, [19] a decision that awaits official ratification by the IOC. Canada, believing it should receive the bronze medal instead, accused the ISU of not following its own rule, which requires that competitors have their placements move up after any competitor who placed higher is disqualified. [20] In a statement on 9 February, the ISU contended that the rule did not apply in this case and that "In any complex and extraordinary situation like this, the reallocation of points could negatively affect the relative team ranking, adversely impacting teams that had nothing to do with the incident in question". [21] In four appeals, with no hearing date set as of 26 February, the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) (along with the Canadian team members) and Russia appealed the decision to CAS by 26 February, with one appeal by the COC requesting that two points (one for each affected event) be added to each of the top four teams other than Russia (the United States, Canada, Japan, and China), thus giving Canada bronze, and three Russian appeals (one each by the ROC, the Russian Figure Skating Federation, and the Russian team members, including Valieva) requesting reinstatement of the gold medal; all four appeals name the ISU as defendant, with the Canadian appeal additionally including all three Russia appellants and the IOC as defendants. [22]
