Madison Hubbell stands inside the Olympic Center’s 1932 Jack Shea Arena on Tuesday in Lake Placid. (News photo — Parker O’Brien)

LAKE PLACID — When retired U.S. ice dancer Madison Hubbell walked around Lake Placid on Monday, Jul 31, she looked up and saw the Olympic rings.

For a moment, it brought her back to the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics — the last event she ever competed in. Her time in Beijing was filled with a lot of highs, and at times, a sense of emptiness.

In her first competition at the 2022 Olympics — the team figure skating event — Hubbell, 32, alongside her United States teammates placed second just behind the Russian Olympic Committee.

However, in an unprecedented turn of events, the medal ceremony was postponed after it was discovered that the 15-year-old ROC athlete Kamila Valieva had tested positive for a performance enhancer months earlier.

The International Olympic Committee then ruled that medals wouldn’t be presented for the team event during the Olympic Games due to the ongoing investigation.

As of Aug. 2, the investigation has yet to be resolved and likely won’t be for a while, with the hearing slated to take place from Sept. 26 to 29.

“It’s a little bit hard to believe that it still hasn’t happened,” Hubbell said.

Hubbell wasn’t the only one impacted by IOC’s decision. Along with her long-time ice dance partner Zachary Donohue, seven other U.S. figure skaters, including Vincent Zhou, Nathan Chen, Karen Chen, Alexa Knierim, Brandon Frazier, Maddison Chock and Evan Bates, left Beijing without a medal for the team event. It the first time in Olympic history athletes has not been awarded their medals on-site, according to U.S. Figure Skating.

Each member received an empty black-and-gold box, with a note inside signed by IOC President Thomas Bachm, which began “An Olympic medal is forever,” according to the Associated Press. The nine empty boxes now sit on a display at the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Museum in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Fortunately for Hubbell and Donohue, they were among the few U.S. skaters that didn’t leave the Olympics empty-handed. Just a few days after the team event, she, alongside Donohue, won bronze in the Ice Dance competition. This time around, they were actually awarded a medal.

When they finally finished their program, the pair bent down and kissed the ice where the Olympic rings were painted. It was the last time they would ever skate in a competition again.

Hubbell said they kind of knew their career was over after competing in Beijing — a “rarity” in the sport of figure skating.

“People might have the sense that their careers will be ending shortly after, but for us we had put it in stone that was our last year and our last events,” she said. “For us, we had a lot of gratitude for everything we had been through and a lot of pride for how far we had come and the partnership that we had built. For us, to know that we were saying goodbye to the ice in those performances was really special.”

To this day, Hubbell and Donohue still remain close, but “not in location, but in relation.”

When looking back at the 2022 Olympics, Hubbell says they were lucky to have the individual event come after the team event.

“Because as an athlete you get very good at dealing with that mental distraction and just focusing on your next task. Just having that goal, helped us to not get too stuck into the emotional down of the cancelation of the medal ceremony,” she said. “But certainly, the whole team is really advocating for a fair outcome, and hoping that it will be resolved sooner rather than later.”

It’s been more than 540 days since it was canceled, and Hubbell’s life has drastically changed. She is now married and is starting a family.

“To imagine receiving my medal in the next years to come and maybe having kids present to watch me get the medal, it changes the feeling,” she said.

Hubbell is now an ice dancing coach — a job she has held for nearly two years. But when she was younger didn’t really think that coaching would be the next step in her future.

“I didn’t know how long it would take me to finish my career,” she said. “I had some other interests of course, but as I stayed in the sport into my early 30s, it just became clear how passionate I was about it and that I’d really like to continue working for the same company that I was training with as an athlete. So now, I’m really proud to be on the staff of (Ice Academy of Montreal) and I’m excited about my future.”

She was in Lake Placid this week for the Lake Placid Ice Dance Championships and International. The competition kicked off on July 30 and wrapped up on Aug. 2.

Hubbell coached the Italian ice dance team of Leia Dozzi and Pietro Papetti, as well as the Canadian teams of Alyssa Robinson and Jacob Portz and Lily Hensen and Nathaniel Lickers.

Despite being an American athlete herself, Hubbell doesn’t coach any U.S. athletes. She said that most ice dance schools in the world are international.

“There are just not that many schools offering a really high-elite ice dance program,” she said. “So, it’s quite common to have at least a few teams from different regions. For us, here in Lake Placid, we have an Italian team, a team from Azerbaijan and three Canadian teams. But at home, we have even more variety and a lot of countries represented so it’s very cool to be involved in developing the sport in many different federations.”

Before becoming a two-time Olympian — having competed in the 2018 Winter Olympics — Hubbell used to compete in this very ice dance competition that she now is coaching in. She also made frequent visits to the Olympic Village.

“I started coming when I was as young as like 10 years old,” she said. “I came for camps and I would spend my summers here every year. For me, it was really the beginning of that ice dance dream and having that summer competition where everything came together. Now, (this ice dance competition has) transformed a little bit. They’ve offered a little more international competition events. It’s a little bit more competitive, it’s a little bit more nerve-wracking than when I was a kid and came with my friends.”

Hubbell said Lake Placid was her first experience of an Olympic city and it’s been really fun for her to see how much it has transformed over the last 20 years.

After returning to Lake Placid as a coach, she is focused on helping the next generation of ice dancers achieve success as she did on that very same ice she used to compete on. Hubbell doesn’t spend her days thinking about that medal she is missing but added that she doesn’t want other athletes to have to go through what she did.

“I think that as a former athlete who is now trying to advocate for a better future for the next generation, it is important for all of us to continue speaking out and saying that this length of time to resolve it, is not just. And we have to continue fighting because, for the next generation, we can’t let this thing happen. For my own personal life, it’s kind of more of a whatever happens happens, when it comes it will come. But as a professional in this sport, I do have to advocate for a better system in the future.”