text: Only now, nearly 50 years after the Josephs competed in the Winter Games and after The New York Times began inquiring about the story, is the I.O.C. moving to clarify its public records. 
   
   The tangled tale begins in 1964, with the West German pair of Marika Kilius and Hans-Jürgen Bäumler arriving in Innsbruck as the heavy favorites. Attractive skaters who carried an aura of glamour, Kilius and Bäumler had earned the Olympic silver medal in 1960 and were the 1963 world champions. They brought Hollywood flair to their sport. 
   
   Skating upsets were rare then, but the Soviet team of Ludmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov beat the West Germans by the narrowest of decisions, a 5-4 split. 
   
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   Wilkes and Revell of Canada won bronze and were more than elated with the result considering Wilkes had fractured her skull in a fall during a photo shoot the previous year. The Josephs, who entered the Innsbruck Olympics as the second-ranked American pairs team and did not expect to come close to the medal podium, were happy to finish fourth. 
   
   But there was plenty of buzz among the skaters and coaches about whether the West Germans had signed a contract with a professional ice show before the Games. Some were reluctant to speak up for fear that complaining would affect them in judging later. But others, including Peter Dunfield, who coached the Josephs at the time, were upset enough to alert the I.O.C. 
   
   “I kept writing to people, so many people, and never got any answers,” Dunfield said. 
   
   Eventually an I.O.C. investigation determined that during the Games, the West Germans had signed a contract to perform in Holiday on Ice, a professional ice show. Avery Brundage, then the I.O.C. president, was strictly against athletes being paid. In January 1966, the West Germans returned their medals. Willi Daume, a longtime German sports official later said that had the pair not returned their medals it might have jeopardized Munich’s eventually successful bid for the 1972 Summer Games. 
   
   The Canadians were elevated from third place to second, and the Josephs were awarded the bronze medal. Each pair received new medals. 
   
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   Ronald Joseph, who was in the midst of medical school when he got the bronze medal, said: “It was all very bizarre, but it was good. I thought, ‘There is a God.’ ” 
   
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   The Josephs recall a subdued medal presentation at the Sheraton Hotel in Chicago. Wilkes and Revell were given their silver medals at the 1967 Canadian national championships. And the two pairs assumed that the matter was settled. 
   
   But it was not. Prodded by two German members, the I.O.C. quietly re-awarded the West Germans their silver medals in 1987, 23 years after the Innsbruck Games, at an executive board meeting in Istanbul. The couple was deemed “rehabilitated.” 
   
   “It was known that many other athletes had similar contracts,” said Dick Pound, a Canadian representative on the I.O.C. executive board who attended that meeting, “so they asked for a return of the medals.” The West Germans were given new silver medals on a sports television show. 
   
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   But Pound said the I.O.C. did not notify representatives from Canada or the United States. David Dore, at the time the director general of the Canadian Figure Skating Association, and Dr. Hugh C. Graham Jr., who was president of the U.S. Figure Skating Association, said they received no word from the I.O.C. And no one from the I.O.C. ever asked for medals to be returned from the Canadians or the Americans. 
   
   Confusing matters further, various skating record books reported different information. Skate Canada’s media guide lists the Canadians as silver medalists with no mention of sharing. The U.S. Figure Skating media guide lists the original finishing order but with an asterisk explaining the disqualification and reversal. But editions before 2002-3 did not mention the reversal. 
   
   The skaters themselves were among the last to learn what happened. 
   
   Had it not been for that party in Chicago, Vivian Joseph, who lives in nearby Highland Park, might never have had an inkling that she was no longer an undisputed bronze medalist. 
   
   The past years have been trying, as the Josephs and Wilkes have been unsure how to explain their Olympic moment in time. 
   
   “I have an 8-year-old daughter, and I take her skating, but I don’t talk about my own skating,” said Ronald Joseph, who lives near Tampa, Fla. “What am I supposed to say? What am I supposed to tell people?” 
   
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   Wilkes feels similarly. 
   
   “I do stumble over it,” she said. “I have a silver medal, so I feel I am allowed to say that I won one, but I feel like a bit of an impostor.” 
   
   On Friday, the I.O.C. may finally have put the matter to rest by confirming that the Soviet Union remains the gold medal winner, Canada and West Germany share the silver, and the Josephs own the bronze. Despite the information on its website over the years, the I.O.C. said in an email that since 1987 this was always intended to be the official result. 
   
   “I’m more excited than I even sound at the moment,” Ronald Joseph said Friday. “One always has to feel vindicated when it’s in the records.” 
   
   Vivian Joseph said Friday: “This is great. But this is how many years later, and after how many books have been printed? How many years do you not have to cringe over this?” ||||| International Olympic Committee records now officially list Vivian and Ron Joseph as Olympic bronze medalists — 50 years after they finished fourth in pairs figure skating at the 1964 Innsbruck Winter Games. 
   
   And, yes, this is confusing as it seems. 
   
   It seems finally to have been straightened out with a recent letter confirming the Josephs as bronze medalists from the IOC to U.S. Figure Skating. 
   
   "You think?" Ron Joseph said Tuesday with a laugh. "It's difficult to be as enthusiastic as you might be, but I'm thrilled the record has been set right." 
   
   The one thing never in dispute — beyond the usual questions about judging — is Soviets Lyudmila Belousova and Oleg Protopov won the event. 
   
   From 1966 until a few years ago, the Joseph siblings, who grew up in Highland Park, thought they had become bronze medalists because the West German team that finished second, Marika Kilius and Hans-Jurgen Baumler, were disqualified for having violated rules about amateurism in place at the time. 
   
   And the Josephs had the medals to prove it. 
   
   But, according to a 2013 New York Times story that catalyzed efforts by U.S. Figure Skating to correct the error, Vivian Joseph learned about seven years ago from someone who had met her at a party that IOC and USFS records did not show her and her brother as bronze medalists. 
   
   "After that, I never talked about that Olympic medal for fear someone would say it wasn't true," Vivian Joseph, 66, who still lives in Highland Park, said Tuesday. 
   
   What the records also did not show was the subtext behind the confusion. 
   
   "It's very strange, isn't it," said Ron Joseph, 70, an orthopedic surgeon in Tampa, Fla. "This is typical of the politics of sport." 
   
   When the West German Olympic Committee learned Kilius and Baumler had signed a professional contract before the Innsbruck Games, they got the skaters to return the medals, an act designed to curry favor for an eventual and successful Munich bid for the 1972 Summer Games. 
   
   After that, the president emeritus of the U.S. Olympic Committee, Kenneth Wilson, presented the Josephs with bronze medals during a USFS executive board meeting Oct. 22, 1966, in Chicago. 
   
   In 1987, the West German Olympic Committee had the IOC reinstate its pair's medals, successfully arguing other skaters at the time had signed professional contracts that never were discovered. 
   
   From then on, some record books would list the Germans as sole silver medalists, with Canadians Debbi Wilkes and Guy Revell as bronze medalists. 
   
   Other listings had the Germans and Canadians as co-silver medalists, with the Josephs in bronze position. From now on, that is to be the official version. 
   
   "I'm ecstatic it has been changed, but to tell you the truth, that Olympic medal is not our proudest achievement, because we were just handed it," Vivian Joseph said. "I am prouder of the world silver medal and the U.S. title we won in 1965." 
   
   phersh@tribpub.com 
   
   Twitter @olyphil
target: – There's no Olympics this winter, but the US still managed to claim two bronze medals in figure skating yesterday—from the 1964 Innsbruck Olympics. Siblings Vivian and Ronald Joseph came in fourth place in pairs figure skating but were given bronze medals a couple of years later after the West German pair who won silver were disqualified for signing a professional contract before the Games, violating then-strict rules about amateurism, the Chicago Tribune reports. The Canadian pair who had won bronze were awarded silver—but the German pair were reawarded their silvers by the International Olympic Committee in 1987, and it later emerged that the Americans had never made it into the official record books as medalists. US Figure Skating—along with US and Canadian Olympic associations—urged the IOC to clear up the confusion after it was highlighted by a New York Times story last year, and the records were finally changed yesterday to show that the Josephs were bronze medalists and the Canadians and Germans both won the silver; a Soviet pair won gold. "I am ecstatic," says Vivian Joseph, who's now 66. "I am sorry it wasn't done sooner, but I am happy it is finally done." She says that after somebody she met at a party years ago looked at the records and disputed her claim to be an Olympic medalist, she stopped talking about the medal in case she was accused of lying. "It's very strange, isn't it," says her 70-year-old brother, now an orthopedic surgeon. "This is typical of the politics of sport."