IOC to award medals taken from Russian figure skaters at Paris Olympics

The award ceremony for American and Japanese figure skaters for the 2022 Olympic team tournament will take place at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, TASS reported, citing the press service of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

“The IOC will work with the International Skating Union (ISU), the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee and the Japanese National Olympic Committee to ensure that the athletes will be able to participate in the medal ceremony here in Paris. We are pleased that the athletes have had this opportunity after a very long wait,” the statement said. The U.S. team will be awarded gold medals, while Japan will be awarded silver.

Earlier, on July 25, it became known that the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) rejected the appeals filed by the Russian side to strip the skaters of their gold medals. According to the court, the ISU did the right thing by taking first place away from the Russian team.

On January 29, CAS disqualified Valieva for four years for violating anti-doping rules. Traces of the banned drug trimetazidine were found in the skater’s sample from December 2021. All of the athlete’s results from that date were annulled. In particular, Valieva, along with her teammates on the Russian national team, were stripped of the gold for winning the team tournament at the 2022 Olympic Games.