PARIS — With the Eiffel Tower presiding over a crowd of thousands and “The Star-Spangled Banner” ringing out on a perfect August day in the French capital, nine American Olympians finally got their reward for something they did 912 days ago and 5,000 miles away.

The 2022 U.S. Olympic figure skaters had to wait 2 1/2 years to the day to get their gold medals for the team event at the Beijing Games, but at least the venue was well worth the delay.

“I didn’t know what to expect when I walked out there,” Karen Chen said of the view. “It was just … I’m speechless, I don’t know. It’s extremely special.”

OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALISTS 🇺🇸🥇 pic.twitter.com/wftC6deAkY

— Team USA (@TeamUSA) August 7, 2024

Chen and her eight teammates from that 2022 team — Nathan Chen, Vincent Zhou, Alexa Knierim, Brandon Frazier, Madison Hubbell, Zachary Donohue, Madison Chock and Evan Bates — were all in Paris for Wednesday’s ceremony, which was delayed for more than two years because the circumstances around their ascent to gold were under review in court.

At the team event at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, Russia cruised to what appeared to be a nine-point win and a gold medal. The United States finished second, with Japan in bronze medal position.

However, the medal ceremony, scheduled for the next day, was postponed because IOC spokesperson Mark Adams said it involved a “legal consultation” with the International Skating Union.

Reports soon followed that star Russian skater Kamila Valieva, 15 years old at the time, had tested positive six weeks earlier for trimetazidine (TMZ), a medicine that can improve blood flow to the heart and is on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s banned substance list. The case was pending for two years, with no medals being awarded in the meantime before the Court of Arbitration for Sport sided with WADA and handed down a four-year ban to Valieva in January.

That decision cleared the way for the IOC to disqualify her results in Beijing, which bumped Russia down to bronze and made the United States the gold medal winner. The Americans knew for months that the gold was theirs; Wednesday’s medal ceremony — which also honored Japan, the now the silver medalists — was the last formal step.

“That’s what we were fighting for,” Chen said. “We really wanted to have a moment. That’s what we didn’t get at Beijing. And so, to get this moment here, it’s such a great moment for us.”

Valieva’s ban was retroactive to December 2021, so she will be eligible to compete in the 2026 Olympics, though perhaps only individually. The IOC did not allow Russia to compete in team events in Paris due to their ongoing invasion of Ukraine, and only approved Russian and Belarussian athletes could compete under the label “Individual Neutral Athletes.”

Several Americans spoke Wednesday of the ongoing fight to keep the sport clean.

“It really symbolizes the value of clean sport,” Chock, an ice dancer on the 2022 team, said, “and I think this is a win for clean athletes everywhere, to show that there is justice and due process.”

Much has changed since the Beijing Olympics for this group. Some have retired. Zhou, a singles skater, enrolled at Brown. Chock and Bates, partners on the ice, got married in June. Hubbell, an ice dancer, also got married last year and had a daughter in February. But they all came back together for a long-overdue celebration.

“Our team has been very resilient and strong throughout the wait,” Bates said. “We feel grateful to have a real Olympic ceremony with the national anthem and our entire team here.”

Said Chock: “I could have never imagined a better setting. To get our Winter Olympic medal at the Summer Olympics is something I could’ve never dreamed of.”

Required reading

(Photo: Michael Reaves / Getty Images)

When the United States women’s gymnastics team won gold in Paris, Simone Biles clapped back at a former teammate.

Tokyo Olympic gymnast MyKayla Skinner called out the 2024 team’s work ethic, “besides Simone,” in a since-deleted video.

Biles posted a collage of photos on Instagram showing her and her teammates carrying the American flag across the floor to celebrate their gold medal victory in the team final. 

In her post on Instagram, Biles did not mince words.

“Lack of talent, lazy, Olympic champions,” she wrote.

In an interview with PEOPLE, Biles defended calling out her ex-teammate, saying she needed to take the “team lead” for her teammates as a three-time Olympian.

“It’s important because you have to teach them to use their voices. And if not, you’re a voice for the voiceless, which is okay,” Biles said. “I just felt like it was right in that moment to stand up for them, because they’re so young and they haven’t fully stood in their power yet.”

“For somebody to stand up, I know it meant a lot for [my teammates],” Biles added.

Jade Carey, Jordan Chiles, Simone Biles, Mykayla Skinner and Sunisa Lee, pose following the Women’s competition of the 2021 U.S. Gymnastics Olympic Trials on June 27, 2021 in St Louis, Missouri.  (Carmen Mandato/Getty Images)

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Skinner said in her newest video she thought she had made up with Biles and was “heartbroken” over what the war of words has now become. She added that she received death threats, and pleaded for Biles to tell her fanbase to cool it.

“Simone’s latest post and others that followed it fueled another wave of hateful comments, DMs, articles and emails. Hate that includes death threats to me, my family and even my agent. My family and my friends don’t deserve to be caught in the crossfire here. They’ve done nothing,” Skinner said.

“To Simone, I am asking you directly and publicly to please put a stop to this. Please ask your followers to stop. You have been an incredible champion for mental health awareness, and a lot of people need your help now. We’ve been attacked in ways that I’m certain you never intended. Your performance, the team’s performance and the Olympics in general should be a time that we support one another.”

Simone Biles of the United States competes during the women’s floor exercise final of artistic gymnastics at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, France, Aug. 5, 2024. (Cheng Min/Xinhua via Getty Images)

Biles won two more golds in Paris and also brought home a silver medal.

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Worth the wait? Absolutely affirmative for the nine U.S. athletes who received gold medals Wednesday at the Paris Olympics, 2½ years after their figure skating team event ended at the Beijing Olympics.

The five men and four women attended a special medal ceremony in front of 13,000 jubilant fans at Champions Park in Paris. The scene was a joyful departure from what would have been a medal ceremony in front of a handful of onlookers in an indoor Chinese arena during the 2022 Winter Games dampened by COVID-19 protocols.

“That was everything,” said U.S. figure skater Alexa Knierim, whose fingernails were painted gold. “It was liberating, it was exciting, it was invigorating, it was loud.”

Against the stunning backdrop of the Eiffel Tower, the gold medals were presented to Knierim, Evan Bates, Nathan Chen, Madison Chock, Zachary Donohue, Brandon Frazier, Madison Hubbell and Vincent Zhou. Seven of eight members of the team from Japan were on hand to receive silver medals.

The medal ceremony did not take place in Beijing because of legal uncertainty following the disqualification of Russian Olympic Committee figure skater Kamila Valieva because of a positive test for the performance-enhancing substance trimetazidine.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport on July 25 confirmed the International Skating Union decision to disregard the points gained by Valieva and to rank Team USA first and Japan second. ROC will receive bronze medals, although no athletes were in Paris to accept them because the ROC is suspended from participating in these Olympics.

“I never could have imagined in my wildest dreams that we would be in Paris receiving our Winter Olympics medals,” Hubbell said. “We’re all so incredibly grateful. What a special moment for us.

“I can’t even imagine that it could be any better than sharing this with our families, so thank you so much to the IOC [International Olympic Committee] and the USOPC [U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee] and U.S. figure skating for making our dream come true.”