Nine empty boxes, currently on display in Colorado Springs, will have gold in their future.

A Monday ruling from the Court of Arbitration for Sport found that Russian skater Kamila Valieva was disqualified from the 2022 Beijing Games and, as a result, the U.S. figure skating team would be recognized as the winner.

“As an American, let me just say we’re putting the champagne on ice,” said U.S. Olympic & Paralympic CEO Sarah Hirshland.

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It remains to be seen when the corks will be popped and the U.S. figure skating team will actually possess the first team gold in its history following perhaps longest dramatic pause in sports history, now at 721 days and counting.

This story has been told in an exhibit called “More Than Medals” at the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Hall of Fame and Museum in downtown Colorado Springs. The display, which opened in June 2023, houses the nine empty boxes the athletes were given as they have awaited the medals that were supposed to occupy the boxes.

The announced results at the time of the Beijing 2022 competition had the U.S. team finishing in second place, but no medals were distributed after a failed test by Valieva.

So, for two years, the U.S. team has waited for its official placement — gold or silver — and had no physical medals in its possession. Of the nine members of Team USA, only Nathan Chen had otherwise earned an Olympic medal.

The shuffling of placement following Valieva’s disqualification and four-year ban means the U.S. finished in first place and Japan in second. There is an ongoing controversy if the Russian Federation or Canada (which would be 1 point behind Russia for the bronze without the points from Valieva) will claim bronze.

The current whereabouts of the medals are unknown, but USOPC CEO Sarah Hirshland said she assumes, based on past experience of retrieving medals to athletes after doping-related results changes, that they are at the International Olympic Committee headquarters in Switzerland.

There are no specific requirements as to how the medals will need to be distributed once the case officially closes and the USOPC takes ownership. That decision will be determined by the USOPC and U.S. Figure Skating, both of which have headquarters in Colorado Springs.

“We would love to have a true Olympic medal ceremony,” said Madison Chock, one of the team members awaiting gold. “For us, that would be a medals ceremony at the Paris Games this summer. That would be the dream scenario. To be able to stand atop the podium at an Olympic event and be there with our families and just to celebrate and be surrounded by the Olympic spirit and the Olympic movement would be our dream scenario.”

Nothing surrounding Monday’s announcement came as a foregone conclusion to the skaters awaiting their medals.

“We really had no idea,” said team member Evan Bates. “Even when we went to bed on Sunday night, we were bracing ourselves for news that it would be silver.”

Added Chock on a Tuesday morning teleconference, “it’s been a very happy 24 hours of news for us.”

Bates and Chock are the only two members of the team who remain active in competitive skating. The team included Brandon Frazier, who trained in Colorado Springs.

“The IOC is now in a position to award the medals in accordance with the ranking, which has to be established by the International Skating Union (ISU),” the organization said on Monday. “We have great sympathy with the athletes who have had to wait for two years to get the final results of their competition.”

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Bates said the team has bonded over its long wait and carries no ill will toward a process he believes has produced the correct result.

“I think ever since we were preparing for the Beijing Games, I think there was always going to be a compromise on what this Olympic experience was going to be,” Bates said. “Because it was during the pandemic, our families weren’t allowed to attend, there were no spectators, we were masked the entire time, it was a bubble. … There were always going to be some tradeoffs there, but we have found gratitude in the fact that those Olympics even took place.

“Now, though this entire sage, we have been focusing on the positivity that this has been a victory for clean sports; albeit it was a difficult and arduous wait.”