Madison Hubbell officially retired from competitive figure skating after the last Winter Olympics in Beijing. A lot has happened for her in the two years since — she married, had a baby, and began a new career as a skating coach.
But no matter how much she tried to move on with her life, one thing was missing.
Hubbell competed with the U.S. skaters that finished second to Russia in the team competition in Beijing. A few days after the competition, news surfaced that Russian skater Kamila Valieva tested positive for a banned drug and the Americans' silver medal would likely be upgraded to gold. The hope, at the time, was to receive their rightful gold in a medal ceremony in Beijing, like all the other athletes.
But that ceremony never came.
For 899 days, the Americans waited. The ruling was challenged in courts and appealed over and over until, two weeks ago, the Court of Arbitration for Sport made a final and decisive ruling in favor of the U.S.
A few days later, it was announced a special re-allocation medal ceremony would be held — complete with podium presentation and national anthems — for the skaters during the Paris Olympics (as well as others who ascended the podium due to the adjudication of prior inquiries).
Suddenly, Hubbell had her closure.
“I feel like it's kind of like the exclamation point at the end of the journey,” Hubbell said in an interview with NBCOlympics.com. “In a lot of ways, I've been able to move on, but this little celebration with the rest of my family and friends, and of course my fellow Olympians, was missing. So it's great to finally complete that chapter and have the memories all together.”
As Hubbell prepared for Wednesday’s celebration, she said she was excited, but found it all a little overwhelming. This was the first time she would be tasked with interviews and Olympic obligations with her six-month-old daughter in tow. It was an “added little logistical thing,” she was happy to share.
At the time of the last Olympics, Hubbell and her teammates had to put the idea of a medal ceremony in the back of their minds so they could all focus on their own individual events. Hubbell and her ice dance partner Zachary Donohue took home bronze, her first Olympic medal.
In that moment, she said, they didn't let the idea of the missing gold medal ceremony get in their heads.
“We didn't let it faze us until we were actually at the event, the closing ceremony, knowing that there's no chance of it happening,” she added.
“Then there was definitely a bit of a low after those Games because of that.”
It was important for Hubbell to move on with her life. She pursued other off-ice milestones with full faith that a ceremony would happen at some point, but she had “no faith that it was going to happen soon.”
It was just a week ago — when the flights were hastily booked and plans were set— when she said the emotions started to come.
“I'm fully expecting that when I step onto the Olympic podium and we receive our gold medals, that the whole magnitude of the situation will finally hit me,” Hubbell added. “I'm excited to see what emotions do come up.”
Ending her career as an Olympic gold medalist makes Hubbell extremely proud, but medals and awards were never what she skated for.
"In many different areas of life, my parents let me explore whatever I was interested in, but it was very clear, even at the age of five, that figure skating was by far my greatest passion," she said. "And they were always there to remind me that to be an Olympic champion was a lot of hard work and dedication, but it was also a fair amount of luck. Luck to be healthy… So many different circumstances being fortunate, especially in our sport to find a partner too. There's just so many pieces that we need to do it, but they always said, it's a great dream and I want you to reach for it and work for it, but nothing's guaranteed in life.
So to actually be able to achieve what 5-year-old Madison was dreaming of is really quite special.
Hubbell spent the past few years using lessons she learned during her skating career. It was always her own personal focus to make sure she was enjoying the process and the journey, especially in the final years before her planned retirement.
Because of that, she said, “I was able to kind of understand the medal itself didn't mean anything.”
“It was the process of having achieved it as a team, and it was the process that we went through for those years,” she added.
All about the team
The team figure skating event was introduced to the Olympics in 2014. In a sport where athletes are usually alone in their training, the relatively new event gave U.S. athletes a chance to feel like a part of a team. Hubbell called being a part of Team USA in the event “a more exhilarating feeling than I thought it would be.”
Having the team together also helped in a Beijing Olympics that occurred in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. Athletes were largely isolated from family and friends, and relied on each other in tough times.
Many of the team members have moved on from skating, but they remain incredibly close. Hubbell still talks with Madison Chock, Evan Bates, and Alexa Knierim. It’s that close bond that made this week’s medal ceremony all the more special.
During the final week in Beijing, teammate Vincent Zhou was in COVID quarantine, and would have been unable to be on the podium with the group had a ceremony happened. Hubbell said they "kind of had a sigh of relief," a ceremony didn’t have to happen without him.
New role for future Olympics
Hubbell doesn’t compete anymore, but she’s hopeful to still get a chance to go to Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo in Italy for the next Olympics in 2026. She’s currently working as a trainer and a figure skating coach at the Ice Academy of Montreal in Canada, one of the schools where she used to train. Her former coaches, including Olympic gold medalist Scott Moir, are now her colleagues.
She wanted to get into that side of skating because her husband, former Spanish ice dancer Adrian Diaz, is a coach, and Hubbell fell in love with the idea of coaching with him.
“Our coaching staff in Montreal does such a great job exemplifying what it could be to be a coach,” she said. “Not just the technique of figure skating, but to be there through people's formative years, to guide them towards excellence, to self-acceptance.
“I feel like I left my experience and training in Montreal with so many life skills that I just felt like it was such a positive impact on me and my life and my relationship with my husband, who also trained there. And I just wanted to keep fostering that feeling in sports.”
The rink has some Olympic hopefuls, including Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko, who are working towards making the U.S. team.
Hubbell said it would be a dream to take the duo to Milan.
“It's been such a pleasure to work with them for the last two years,” she added. “They're great athletes. Very, very young and inspirational, and they're working really hard towards it, so that's the goal. Hopefully we'll be there and supporting them as they take their step into what it means to be an Olympian for Team USA.”
The lessons Hubbell learned, not just in her final Olympics but the wait for gold over the last two years, will be part of her coaching for any skating hopeful.
“I think it just really solidified my importance of enjoying it, not just for the outcome,” she said. “It’s something that drives you in sport to want to win and to want to succeed, and that is great, but if I had been doing it only for that outcome I think that this particular two-and-a-half year wait and just back-and-forth situation would have really made me disheartened and I can foresee that I would have been really struggling with that.
“But I was so excited to just experience everything there was to experience in my last season, to go to the Olympic games again to do everything that I hadn't done the first time in 2018, and to experience the team event and how much we could also come together to support each other and not just feel like we were competing against each other all the time.
“And because I left feeling that I had accomplished all of those goals, I knew that I would be fine to wait through 10, 20 years for the medal.”
