It\’s been 18 months since the Athens Olympics, but the U.S. show jumping team finally got to wear their gold medals on Sunday, Feb. 5, in a special ceremony during the Gold Coast Jumper Classic in Wellington, Fla.

The squad—Beezie Madden, Chris Kappler, Peter Wylde and McLain Ward—finished second in Athens, galloping to the silver medal in a jump-off against Sweden.

The German team wore the medals that evening, but when Ludger Beerbaum\’s Goldfever tested positive for a forbidden substance, the U.S. team appeared to move to the top spot.

It took many months of legal wrangling before the result was finalized, however, and then several more months to actually retrieve the gold medals from the German riders.

The award ceremony began with Jimmy Fairclough driving Jane Clark\’s four-in-hand team into the ring to deliver David O\’Connor, the 2000 individual Olympic gold medalist in eventing who\’s now the president of the U.S. Equestrian Federation, and Frank Chapot, the team\’s chef d\’equipe who rode on six Olympic teams.

And then three of the four members of the 1984 Olympic gold-medal team—Joe Fargis, Conrad Homfeld and Leslie Howard, the last team of U.S. show jumpers to win the Olympic team gold medal—joined them in the center of the ring to present the medals with O\’Connor. In Athens, Kappler wore the red U.S. coat Homfeld had given to him as a teenager, the coat Homfeld had worn in 1984.

After the presentation, Wylde, who competes in Europe and flew to Florida especially for this ceremony, watched his teammates contest the Gold Coast Classic grand prix, his medal still around his neck. He then signed autographs and posed for photos with young fans.