Why US figure skaters from 2022 Winter Olympics are just now getting their medals

It took more than 700 days, but it was worth the wait in gold for the U.S. Olympic figure skating team.

The nine members of Team USA who competed at the 2022 Olympics in Beijing finally made history as the first U.S. figure skating squad to win team Olympic gold when a Russian figure skater was officially disqualified on Jan. 29 for testing positive for a banned substance in late 2021.

"The Olympic career for most of us is not that long, so waiting for two years has been really tough for a lot of us," figure skater Evan Bates told Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb on TODAY on Jan. 31.

"Most of us have moved on to other passions, and so this decision has been monumental for everyone," he continued. "For our team, for clean sport, for all of the clean athletes who have lost their medal moments in the past because of people who have doped. So I hope that there’s been some joy, some solace for those athletes as well."

Bates was joined on TODAY by teammates Nathan Chen, Alexa Knierim, Brandon Frazier and Madison Chock for a moment nearly two years in the making.

Judges awarded the silver medal to Team USA in Beijing in 2022, but they were given empty boxes with no medals due to controversy. They never got to have the dream moment on the medal stand.

They had been stuck in limbo for nearly two years after the news broke following the competition that Russian skater Kamila Valieva had tested positive for a banned substance prior to the Olympics.

A verdict from the Court of Arbitration for Sport delivered on Jan. 29 finally disqualified Valieva, who was a star performer as a 15-year-old at the Olympics.

The ruling resulted in Russia being stripped of the team gold medal, and the U.S. being upgraded to the gold.

"I didn't really realize how much it had been weighing on me, and I guess probably weighing on all of us until we found out the news," Chock said. "And it almost felt like a weight had been lifted to just feel this closure from the Beijing Games finally."

"I have always felt like our team was a gold medal team, and it's just so gratifying and fulfilling to really have it be finalized and to sit here today with my friends," Knierim said. "We always knew that we were destined for greatness, but it's great to really have it now."

Chen said they found out like everyone else through media reports.

"I'm super excited for this team," he said. "I'm so proud of them, the way they carried themselves through this indecision. We're just really happy to finally have some decision."

"It’s not just a medal ceremony. It’s not just a gold medal. It represents the culmination of our entire lives, our entire body of work over the last 20 years or however long many of us had been skating," team member Vincent Zhou told TODAY in a video interview from his dorm room at Brown University.

The Team USA members said there is no plan yet for when and where they will officially receive their gold medals. Hoda and Savannah said that TODAY will gladly host the festivities on Rockefeller Plaza.

"I think we're all just still digesting the news of, we are Olympic champions, and there are committees that are still meeting about how they're going to present those medals," Frazier said. "One way or another, I know it's going to be a magical moment just to get them with these incredible teammates."

The newly minted gold medal means Chen now has two golds from Beijing after also winning the individual gold.

He is the first American male figure skater to win two golds since Dick Button, who won the individual Olympic titles in 1948 and 1952. The Olympic team event for figure skating did not debut until the 2014 Games in Sochi, Russia.

Chen, 24, is now a student studying data science at Yale University. He was asked if he will go for the gold again at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy.

"I love skating, it's definitely a very big part of my life still," he said. "I find myself at the rink all the time, so I still want to hold on to that a little bit, but I'm really happy at Yale. I'm really happy with sort of the academic world right now. The decision will come as it comes."

This article was originally published on TODAY.com