Two years later, Brown student to receive Beijing Winter Olympics gold medal in Paris

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] - Good things come to those who wait - just ask the U.S. figure skating team.

After a two-and-a-half-year delay following a Russian doping scandal, the members of Team USA will finally receive the gold medals they earned in a team event at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. It marks the United States' first-ever gold in the Olympic team event.

Champions Park in Paris, where hundreds of athletes are currently celebrating their achievements as 2024 Summer Olympians, will host a medal presentation ceremony on Wednesday, Aug. 7, for the figure skaters who were denied the opportunity in Beijing.

Among them is 23-year-old Vincent Zhou, a rising senior studying economics at Brown.

Zhou made his Olympic debut in Pyeongyang in 2018, where he made history as the first skater to land a quadruple Lutz in the short program. He's also a two-time World Medalist and Junior World champion. But now he can confidently call himself something even more impressive: an Olympic gold medalist.

"During the last two years, I got so used to introducing myself as 'an Olympic medalist, but it's complicated,' that it feels a bit strange to finally be able to change that," Zhou said. "I am so grateful that we saw this outcome and that the International Olympic Committee is willing to hold a medal ceremony in Paris. My team and I are so excited."

At the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022, the United States and Japan placed second and third, respectively, behind the Russian Olympic Committee. Within hours of the results, however, Russian skater Kamila Valieva was implicated in a doping case, and no team medals were awarded.

Valieva's case took nearly two years to resolve. Earlier this year, the Court of Arbitration for Sport issued a final ruling that banned Valieva from skating through the end of 2025 and disqualified all of her performances dating back to December 2021. With Valieva's scores removed from the Russian Olympic Committee's totals, the U.S. was elevated to the podium's top spot, with Japan taking the silver.

Canada, which placed fourth, did not move up to claim bronze - a decision that is still under judgement by the Court of Arbitration for Sport after a Canadian appeal.

"There's still work left to be done," Zhou said. "Canada's fight is not over, and the fight for clean sport everywhere, including in the U.S., continues."

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