A 2019 video of a ladies free figure skating tournament in France where the third place winner was mistakenly awarded a gold Medal, is going viral in India with a false claim that the mix-up took place during the ongoing Tokyo Olympics.
The video shows one of the officials at the event placing a gold medal on the skater who came in third in the competition. Realising the faux pas, the third place skater from the US graciously places the medal on the Russian skater who came in first. The clip has been shared and falsely linked to the Tokyo Olympics. Boxer Lovlina Borgohain entered the semi finals and assured India a medal at the Tokyo Olympics 2020. Manipur's Mirabai Chanu won a silver in the games on July 24.
The caption with the video says, "Olympic - Mistake moment".
Click here and here to see the Facebook posts.
Click here and here to see archives of those posts. The video has also been viral on WhatsApp with a distasteful message.
The video was shared on Twitter as a recent Olympics faux pas.
Click here to see an archive of the tweet.
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Fact Check
BOOM ran a reverse image search on one of the screenshots from the viral video and found the same video uploaded on YouTube on November 19, 2019.
The description with the video states, "Medal mix-up at ISU Grand Prix 2019 in Grenoble - Ladies Victory Ceremony. Mariah Bell receives gold medal by mistake (instead of Alena Kostornaia). Alina Zagitova points it out..."
Taking cue from the caption, we searched with the words "Alina Zagitova of Russia, Alena Kostornaia of Russia and Mariah Bell of USA " on international stock photo sharing website Alamy and Getty images. We were directed to an image where Mariah Bell from the USA, who secured the third position, can be seen handing over the medal to Alena Kostornaia from Russia.
According to the caption of the image, the women were winners of the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating 2019 held at Patinoire Polesud on November 2, 2019 in Grenoble, France.
Below is a screen comparison between a screengrab from the video and the image we found on Alamy stock images.
More images from the tournament can be found here and here.
BOOM also found a report by Russian state-affiliated media outlet RT published on November 3, 2019 about the medal mix-up. The report states, "Alena Kostornaia, 16, who won her first-ever senior Grand Prix in Grenoble, burst into laughter after discovering that her medal had been awarded to American counterpart Mariah Bell, who finished third." It further reported, "The awkward confusion was caused by Christophe Ferrari, the president of the Grenoble metropolitan area, who was invited to award medals on Saturday."
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