The ISU was accused of rearranging the 2022 Olympic team's figure skating medals following the disqualification and suspension of Kamila Valieva and apparently failed to apply its own set of rules.
The International Skating Union, the figure skating body tasked with reorganizing the 2022 Olympic team's figure skating medals following the suspension and disqualification of Kamila Valieva, apparently failed to apply its own set of rules and picked the wrong bronze medalist on Tuesday morning.
A few hours after USA TODAY Sports broke the news that the United States would officially win the gold medal in the 2022 Olympic team figure skating competition, the ISU sent out a press release announcing that the United States was first, Japan was second and Russia was third.
The publication was accompanied by a table showing that Valieva was disqualified from both the short and long programs, each of which she won and received 10 points in each, for a total of 20 points.
On February 7, 2022 in Beijing, Russia won the gold medal with 74 points, followed by the USA with 65 and Japan with 63. Canada was fourth with 53.
Therefore, ISU deducted Valieva's points from the team score, lowering Russia from its original gold medal-winning team score of 74 to its new score of 54.
And that's all ISU did.
However, Rule 353(4)(a) of the ISU Technical Rules applicable at the Olympic Games states that: “Disqualified competitors will forfeit their placings and will be officially recorded as Disqualified (DSQ) in the intermediate and final results.” Participants who have completed the competition and were originally placed worse than the disqualified participants will advance their ranking(s) accordingly.”
Under that rule, any woman who finished behind Valieva in the team skating competition at the 2022 Beijing Olympics — every single one of them — would move up one spot in both the short and long programs. Each place is worth one point more than the previous place, i.e. second place is worth 9, third is worth 8 and so on.
This means that the women from the various participating nations who ran in the short and long programs should now receive two additional points for their teams – one in the short and one in the cross-country.
So that means the updated team score for the United States would be 67; for Japan 65; and for Canada 55.
Canada's 55 points would then surpass Russia's 54 points.
Skate Canada, the national governing body for figure skating, used this rule in a strong response to the ISU on Tuesday morning:
“Skate Canada is extremely disappointed with the International Skating Union (ISU) position on the long-awaited awarding of medals for the Beijing 2022 Olympics figure skating team competition.
“The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruled that the ban includes, in addition to a four-year ban on competition, 'the disqualification of (all) competition results' achieved by Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva since the positive test.” The ISU applies the rule in its latest decision 353 not to…Skate Canada strongly disagrees with the ISU’s position on this matter and will consider all options to appeal this decision.”
Four emails sent to ISU spokespeople in the last four hours seeking comment and explanation went unanswered.