US and Japan figure skaters finally receive Beijing medals in special, long-awaited ceremony

The Star

Two-and-a-half years after competing at the Beijing Winter Olympics, American and Japanese figure skaters stepped on to the podium in Paris at the Champions Park on Aug 7 to receive reallocated gold and silver medals, drawing a line under a Russian doping saga that rocked the Beijing Winter Games.   WATCH MORE: https://thestartv.com/c/news  SUBSCRIBE: https://cutt.ly/TheStar  LIKE: https://fb.com/TheStarOnline

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00:00It is a very interesting situation and our wish as a team was just to be able to have

00:29a celebration together and then also at an Olympics and so you know fortunately

00:34this is the closest Olympics to our our Olympics and it would have been really

00:38special of course to have in Beijing the ceremony was amazing there as well but

00:42of course you know having at the base of the Eiffel Tower was not that either.

00:44I would say you know life has moved on since then I've been keeping busy I've

00:49been going to school studying and and doing things you know meeting new people

00:53making new friends and all that so and I also had the 2022 World Championships

00:57where I ended up winning a medal there and that sort of gave me some closure to

01:02what happened at the 2022 Olympics just a month before that but in terms of the

01:06the legal case surrounding doping and and the medal allocation for the team

01:11event that's been always been there and everyone's been asking me about it that

01:15certainly hasn't helped me forget it but but you know I think finally now we can

01:20get some get some closure for for this specific medal allocation but in the

01:24broader scale the fight for clean sport continues

02:24I think it was very emotional and overwhelming at the same time but I

02:45think that's the one thing that made this so amazing in 2022 there was COVID

02:50so we weren't able to have like family or an audience and to have an audience

02:54while we got our medals and of course family and friends too was pretty

02:58incredible

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