Old Video of Mix-Up at Award Ceremony Shared as One From Tokyo Olympics

The video that was shared as that of 2020 Tokyo Olympics was from the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating 2019.

A video of mix-up at an award ceremony of a skating competition has been shared by several social media users with the false claim that it happened during the ongoing 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

However, we found that the video was from the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating 2019 held in France. The mix-up occurred when the person awarding the medals gave the gold medal to the person who came third who later placed the medal on the skater who came first.

CLAIM

The video was shared with caption that read, "Olympic mistake moments".

Archives of more such posts can be found here, here, here and here.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We extracted keyframes from the video using the InVID WeVerify Google Chrome Extension and conducted a reverse image search on some of the keyframes. In the search results, we found the same video uploaded on YouTube on 19 November 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...(sic)'

Taking a hint from the description, we conducted a keyword search of the names of the participants and found that similar images on stock photo websites - Getty Images and Alamy. While going through other photos on Alamy, we came across a photo in which we found a scene similar to the viral video.

According to the image caption, the contestants were Alina Zagitova of Russia, Alena Kostornaia of Russia and Mariah Bell of the United States at the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating Internationaux de France at Polesud Ice Skating Rink on 2 November 2019 in Grenoble, France.

A video of the Ladies Free Skating tournament can be seen here. The advertising on the side of the ice rink were the same as that in the viral video.

A news report Russian state-affialiated media outlet RT published on 3 November 2019 also talked about the mix up that took place in the award ceremony.

The report said, "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."

Evidently, an old clip a mix-up at skating competition was shared by social media users as a recent clip from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

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