Winter Olympic stars Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier have admitted the 'moment has gone', as they continue to wait for the medals they won in Beijing nine months ago due to the doping saga surrounding Kamila Valieva. Despite competing, the Russian athlete tested positive for the banned angina drug trimetazidine from a sample taken six weeks before the Games.
At the Games, Valieva helped the Russian team win gold in the figure skating event, whilst the USA came second and Japan third. An investigation surrounding the teenage star's positive test is still ongoing, meaning the International Olympic Committee (IOC) are yet to award the competitors with their medals.
Despite winning an Olympic silver, American stars Knierim and Frazier have been unable to put one of sport's greatest awards around their necks.
Discussing the saga, Knierim told BBC Sport : "We were bringing home a medal for our country, which just felt so much bigger and greater [than any other], and to go home right after the Olympics and show and tell this beautiful medal to people at home who have seen something they never thought was possible.
"These are the moments I wish we were able to have. The sad part is that nothing will be able to replicate or recreate the moment in Beijing. Even if we were to go back to the exact location [to receive the medals], timing is everything and that moment is gone."
Whilst the Americans finished second in Beijing, a potential punishment for Valieva could see her and her Russian teammates disqualified, therefore promoting Team USA into first and changing their medal from silver to gold. Amid the delay, the IOC have promised a 'dignified' ceremony will still go ahead.
Like his teammate though, Frazier believes the ceremony would now be too little too late. He said: "The colour only matters when it comes down to whether the competition was fair or not. That's out of our hands, that's what the investigations are doing.
"It's more about we just wanted that medal and that experience at the Games, so that part was the disappointing part so now it's just about what Team USA and the other countries deserve and that's where we're at." Nine months on from the chaos, Frazier also hopes something similar can never happen again.
The 29-year-old commented: "If the committees who make these decisions care about preventing this from happening again, they need to listen to the athletes involved so they can understand first-hand what we're living through and what it felt like to have moments like this, so they understand the severity of it."
