 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. 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. 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. But, according to a 2013 New York Times story that catalyzed efforts by U.S. From then on, some record books would list the Germans as sole silver medalists, with Canadians Debbi Wilkes and Guy Revell as bronze medalists. What the records also did not show was the subtext behind the confusion. 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. Figure Skating Association, said they received no word from the I.O.C. Confusing matters further, various skating record books reported different information. 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 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. said in an email that since 1987 this was always intended to be the official result.
– 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."