This video of a medal mix-up is from a Skating competition in 2019, not from Olympics - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
August 2, 2021
A video of medals getting mixed up between two women is being widely shared on social media claiming that it happened during the ongoing Tokyo 2020 Olympics. One person in the video places a medal on a woman. After realizing it does not belong to her, she graciously places the medal on the woman standing next to her. Let us fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video of a medal mix-up in Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
Fact: The video is from the medal ceremony at the Internationaux de France, ISU Grand Prix 2019. ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating is a series of figure skating competitions organized by the International Skating Union. No such mix-up happened in the on-going 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
When reverse image search is done on the screenshots of the video, a lengthier YouTube video with similar visuals was found. The YouTube video was uploaded on 19 November 2019, with the title ‘Medal mix-up at ISU Grand Prix 2019 in Grenoble’. According to the description of the video, this was the medal ceremony at the Internationaux de France 2019, where Mariah Bell received a gold medal by mistake instead of Alena Kostornaia; and Alina Zagitova standing beside those two pointed it out.
Taking cue that this video is from the 2019 ISU Grand Prix, we searched Google with relevant keywords. An image in the Stock Photo Website, Alamy, says the event was a victory ceremony on day 2 of the ISU; taken on 02 November 2019. A news article says, the local official mistakenly gave the gold medal to US Skater Mariah bell instead of the Russian winner Alena Kostornaia. ‘The women’s award ceremony at the figure skating Grand Prix in France descended into a comedy show,’
ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating is a series of figure skating competitions are organized by the International Skating Union.
To sum it up, this video of a medal mix-up is from a Skating competition in 2019, not from Tokyo 2020 Olympics.