How the Wait for Olympic Medals Became an Endurance Sport

It took Lashinda Demus of the United States 52.77 seconds to run the women’s 400-meter hurdles at the 2012 London Olympics. It took more than a decade for her to be upgraded to first place from second. A year after that decision, and 12 years after the race, she is still waiting to receive her gold medal.

One of her American teammates, Erik Kynard Jr., competed in the high jump at the London Games. Like Demus, he was beaten by a Russian athlete later found guilty of doping. And like Demus, he had to wait many years before being named the victor. He, too, has never touched his gold medal.

Demus and Kynard are expected to finally receive their medals this summer during the Paris Olympics, according to officials at the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee. The details are still being ironed out; officials hope a resolution could come soon.

But for nine American figure skaters who in January were elevated to first place in the team competition nearly two years after the end of the 2022 Beijing Olympics, the wait continues: The Russian team that finished ahead of them in Beijing, and later became embroiled in a doping case, has filed multiple appeals challenging the loss of its gold medals. That could mean months, at least, of new legal battles.

All three cases have highlighted longstanding concerns about the inability of international sports officials to balance the imperatives of clean sport and fair play with providing justice to deserving athletes in a timely manner. The reasons are varied — vulnerabilities in testing; a lack of uniform international commitment in the antidoping system; an often lengthy appeals process — but the consequences are personal.

Dozens of competitors have received their gold, silver and bronze medals long after their Olympic moment has passed. Some, like Demus, 41, and Kynard, 33, retired from competition before getting a resolution. Others have eventually celebrated what should have been a career highlight with something more akin to a shrug.

“It makes the I.O.C. look really bad,” said Bill Mallon, an Olympic historian who tracks the reallocation of medals. “In the N.B.A. and the N.F.L., when the game ends, you know who won.”

A year seems more reasonable to resolve doping cases and reallocate medals, Kynard said in an interview, “but not 12.”

During his ordeal, Kynard said, his faith and trust in the Olympic movement have fallen “lower and lower.” But he also said he had learned not to define himself by the outcome of a sporting event. He laughed at one point and said there was one consolation to waiting for his gold medal: “I look forward to giving my youngest son a new teething toy.”

The reception of a deferred medal can confirm an athlete’s sense of integrity, and bring some inner peace. But the waiting can also cause mental stress and, for gold medalists in particular, a significant loss of financial opportunities.

Kynard estimated that he had lost out on at least $500,000 in potential prize money, sponsorships and appearance fees that he might have claimed as an Olympic champion. Twelve years later, he said, the meaning of a gold medal feels diminished, “like a participation trophy.”

Belated medals have often been delivered quietly, and sometimes with little dignity. Adam Nelson, who was declared the winner of the shot put competition at the 2004 Athens Olympics after the apparent victor was disqualified for doping, received his gold medal nine years later outside a Burger King in the Atlanta airport.

Nelson said the anticlimax of receiving his medal at an airport rather than at the site of the competition in Olympia, Greece, the hallowed home of the ancient Games, filled him not with joy but rather “a real sense of loss.”

Demus, now a high school track coach, did not respond to requests for comment. Last year, upon finally being declared the 2012 hurdles champion, she expressed mixed emotions. In an email to NBC Sports, she wrote that users of banned drugs should be stripped of their medals — and added that she would not want any other athlete to experience the loss that she did in terms of “the official title, medal, recognition and missed compensation that goes with it all.”

Since drug screenings began at the Olympics in 1968, there have been 164 events in which medals have been reallocated or withdrawn, according to Mallon, the Olympic historian.

Perhaps most notoriously, six of the top seven finishers in the men’s 94 kilogram (roughly 207 pounds) weight lifting competition at the London Olympics — including all three original medalists — were later disqualified for doping. The eventual winner was Saeid Mohammadpour, an Iranian who finished fifth in the initial results.

Antidoping officials are often a step behind in an endless game of pharmacological cat-and-mouse with athletes who use banned substances and blood-boosting agents. To enhance the efficacy of drug testing, blood and urine samples can be stored and retested for up to 10 years as more cutting-edge detection technology is developed.

(In 2022, when he was retired from elite competition, Kynard accepted a six-month ban sparked by a post on social media showing him using an intravenous saline infusion — which can aid in recuperation — beyond a permitted volume. The infusion contained no prohibited substances, United States antidoping officials said, but the violation still required a punishment.)

Even brief delays can see competitors miss out on every Olympic athlete’s dream: to stand atop a podium at the Games, to see their flag raised, to hear their national anthem played.

“When the systems fail you and you get slighted, there’s no adequate replacements for it,” said Nelson, now a high school athletic director. “In the Olympic cycle, it happens once every four years. There’s nothing you can do to go back and rewrite that history. That moment has passed.”

Since 2018, the I.O.C. and sports governing bodies have sought more decorous ways to present deferred medals. The sites in Paris being considered as possible venues for Demus and Kynard to receive their gold medals include the Olympic Stadium, where the track and field competition will be held, and a park at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, where all medalists will be invited to celebrate among family, friends and thousands of spectators.

Kynard said the Olympic Stadium seemed a less likely choice because it would probably be embarrassing for the I.O.C. to so publicly acknowledge “how bad this got screwed up.” The I.O.C. said that it seeks to resolve such situations in a dignified manner by giving athletes options that attempt to “best meet their preferences.”

If the figure-skating appeals process from the 2022 Beijing Olympics is completed in time for the Paris Games, which remains uncertain, the nine American skaters could be awarded their gold medals during the closing ceremony.

Madison Chock, 31, an ice dancer with her husband, Evan Bates, 35, said on a teleconference call in January that they have experienced “a small underlying feeling of maybe a little bit of sadness and disappointment that we didn’t get that Olympic moment.”

Sarah Hirshland, the chief executive of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, said that protecting the integrity of sports should be the highest priority. But she also described the long wait for redress by Demus and Kynard as “terrible” and “unacceptable.”

“We have a chance to try to make it right,” she said, “and that’s what we have to do.”