Eric Radford, Vanessa James and the rest of Canada’s team skate athletes from the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics could soon be bronze medalists.
Over two years after the Closing Ceremony.
How? Grab a cup of coffee and take a seat.
The possibility stems from an appeal filed by Skate Canada, the Canadian Olympic Committee and eight Canadian figure skaters with the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
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The appeal stems from a controversy at those Olympics involving Russian skater Kamila Valieva. During the 2022 Olympics, a sample Valieva had submitted for drug testing in December 2021 tested positive for trimetazidine, which is a banned substance.
Valieva, 15 at the time, competed in the team event, helping Russia take gold.
Last month, the CAS issued a four-year ban of Valieva from competitive skating, backdating the start of that ban to when she submitted the sample. They didn’t buy her lawyers’ arguments that the drug could have come from a strawberry dessert, according to the Associated Press.
The CAS also erased all of her results, including the points she earned for Russia — a total of 20 — in the team event at the Beijing Olympics.
Erasing just the points she contributed dropped Russia from first to third, one point ahead of Canada.
However, while the CAS erased her points, they didn’t then re-shuffle the points earned in the short program and free skate in which she competed for the Russian team. If they did, that would put Canada one point ahead of Russia, giving them the bronze medal.
If CAS rules in favor of Canada, that would give Radford his fourth Olympic medal and second bronze. Radford came out publicly on Outsports in 2014, and in 2018 he became the first publicly out gay man to win an Olympic gold medal, in this same team event with Canada.
It would be James’ first Olympic medal.
For their part, the Russians have also filed three appeals saying they should have never been stripped of the gold medal.
This two-year saga will continue, hopefully resolved by the next Winter Olympics in Italy in 2026.
