MILAN — This time there would be no waiting.
This time, they wouldn’t have to wait for the International Olympic Committee or the International Skating Union or the World Anti-Doping Agency to step up and do the right thing.
This time Team USA could savor their moment, their golden moment, in the moment.
Ilia Malinin, the two-time defending World champion, with a dramatic free skate, clinched Team USA’s successful defense of its Olympic team skating gold medal at the Milano Ice Skating Arena Sunday night.
With the U.S. and Japan tied going into the final round of the four-day team competition, Malinin overcame an early stumble, powering through a program that gained momentum and was punctuated by a one-footed back flip that tagged an exclamation mark to the performance and the Americans’ victory on the ice.
“We came here to do one job and we achieved it,” Malinin said.
Malinin’s free skate, which also included a quad salchow and triple Axel sequence, received a 200.03 score, surpassing the 194.86 mark for Japan’s Shun Sato.
Malinin’s stumble wasn’t the only nervous moment for the U.S. on a night that played against the backdrop of Olympic figure skating’s biggest controversy since the Salt Lake City Games judging scandal in 2002.
Amber Glenn, the three-time U.S. champion, was a disappointing third in the women’s free skate.
“If an average person were to watch, they’d probably be like, ‘Oh, it’s fine. Just a few little things,’ but as skating people we know, there were many, many, many points left out on the table,” Glenn said.
Just hours after Kamila Valieva, Russia’s then 15-year-old superstar, had led a Russian squad to the gold medal in the 2022 Beijing Olympic Games team skating competition four years ago, it was revealed that she had tested positive for a banned performance-enhancing drug in December 2021. Valieva’s positive test should have disqualified her and stripped Russia of the team gold medal, according to World Anti-Doping rules, making Team USA Olympic champions.
Instead, it would be 721 days before the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the ultimate judicial body in international sports, banned Valieva for four years for the doping violation and ordered her to forfeit “any titles, awards, medals, profits, prizes and appearance money” after December 25, 2021, when her positive urine sample was collected.
The CAS ruling elevated Team USA to gold medal status after the ISU adjusted the team competition results with Japan being awarded the silver medal.
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