MONTREAL — More than two years since Kamila Valieva’s positive doping test was revealed at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, the Russian skater still looms over the sport’s world championships this week.

Valieva’s coach, Eteri Tutberidze, whose behavior toward Valieva was denounced by International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach, has appeared on the Bell Center’s giant scoreboard that dangles above the ice. With Russian athletes banned from these world championships in response to the country’s invasion of Ukraine, Tutberidze is here with a handful of Georgian skaters, including her daughter Diana Davis.

Every glimpse of Tutberidze seemed to be a reminder of the months of chaos that followed the discovery of the banned heart medication trimetazidine in Valieva’s system after the skater helped the Russian Olympic Committee’s team win the team event in Beijing. In the months that followed, Russia’s anti-doping agency slowly investigated her case only to determine she had committed a violation but not one for which she bore fault and thus did not deserve to lose her medal.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport examined Valieva’s case and, in January, upheld a four-year World Anti-Doping Agency suspension for the skater dating from just before the Beijing Olympics, seemingly nullifying the Russian gold and leading the IOC to promise gold medals to the United States skaters, who had placed second.

Most of all, the visage of Valieva’s coach was a symbol of how 25 months after the Beijing Games, no medals have been awarded for the team event, with little clarity on when they will be.

After CAS’s January ruling, the International Skating Union recalculated its results of the Beijing contest moving the United States to gold, Japan to silver and awarding the bronze to Russia over fourth-place Canada, in seeming conflict with its own rules. Now separate appeals to CAS from the Canadian team, Russian team, the Russian Olympic Committee and Russia’s skating federation has left everyone around skating frustrated and confused.

U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and U.S. Figure Skating officials have made plans for a ceremony at this summer’s Paris Olympics to present gold medals to the members of their team. But with all the pending appeals, they have no idea if they will be able to do so.

Even ice dancers Madison Chock and Evan Bates, the lone Americans from the Beijing team event still competing, seem deflated by the endless delays. Just weeks ago, Chock and Bates, who are engaged to be married in June, talked excitedly on a USOPC conference call about getting their medals in Paris. On Friday, after winning the rhythm dance portion of the world championships, they stood in a hall below the Bell Center and shook their heads when asked if they will get their wedding rings before their Olympic medals.

“The rings will probably come first,” Chock said with a sigh.

ISU President Jae Youl Kim had little to say about the topic at a Friday morning news conference, his first since the CAS ruling on Valieva. He called the saga “unfortunate” and offered “sympathy for our athletes for the frustration they must be going through” in waiting for their medals, but said he would not talk about the process his organization used to recalculate the Beijing results because of the CAS appeals.

He acknowledged the presence of the dozens of substances that were in Valieva’s system when she submitted her tainted sample on Dec. 25, 2021 and called it a “sportsmanship [and] a safeguarding” issue and wants the ISU to “continue to educate the [skaters’] entourage and whoever is around the national federations,” but dodged questions about the presence of Tutberidze this week.

For several minutes reporters repeatedly asked questions about Russia until Kim stopped in the middle of an answer and tried desperately to change the topic. He said he wanted to “celebrate our beautiful, incredible skaters” and, unprompted, started to tell the story of 40-year-old Deanna Stellato-Dudek, who along with her pairs partner Maxmime Deschamps, won the pairs competition Thursday night.

Eventually, another reporter raised her hand. She said she was from Ukraine and wondered if Kim thought the ISU was doing enough to support Ukrainian athletes.

And it was clear that even without Russia at the skating world championships, the topic of Russia still lingers over everything.