Bronze Medal Controversy
U.S. Women’s Gymnastics has a major bronze-medal kerfuffle that still isn’t satisfactorily resolved.
What Happened
On August 5 at the Paris Summer Olympics, there was only one competitor left on the floor exercise of the women’s gymnastics individual competition — Jordan Chiles of Team USA. After her routine was finished, she waited with bated breath for her score to appear. It was a disappointing score of 13.666, landing her in fifth place and out of medal contention. Romania’s Ana Barbosu began to celebrate. It looked like she was the bronze medal winner with a score of 13.700.
The coach for Jordan Chiles, Cecile Landi, sprang into action and appealed to the judges, claiming they misscored an element of Chiles’s performance and didn’t adequately give credit for the level of difficulty in her routine. The appeal was granted, and Chiles’s score went from 13.666 to 13.766, knocking Barbosu out of third place.
The Arbitration Back and Forth
It was a heartbreaker for Team Romania. Medals were awarded, but the controversy was just heating up. Romania wasn’t going to let what happened rest. The Romanians challenged the change in Chiles’s score, claiming that her coach didn’t appeal within the one minute allowed after the initial posting of the score.
On August 10, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruled that Coach Landi had failed to appeal in time. Chiles was subsequently stripped of her medal.
The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee released a statement saying, “We firmly believe that Jordan rightfully earned the bronze medal, and there were critical errors in both the initial scoring by the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) and the subsequent CAS appeal process that need to be addressed.”
On August 11, U.S. Gymnastics submitted a timestamped video. It showed that Coach Landi made her appeal 47 seconds after the initial posting of Chiles’s score and a follow-up appeal at the 55-second mark — both well within the FIG rule of one minute.
USA Gymnastics has submitted additional evidence to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. pic.twitter.com/GOKymbAtcq
— USA Gymnastics (@USAGym) August 11, 2024
The Result
The CAS denied this new evidence on August 12, maintaining the decision that Barbosu was the winner of the bronze medal. U.S. Gymnastics can still appeal to two more courts.
Romania has proposed a three-way split of the bronze medal between Chiles, Barbosu, and a third competitor, Sabrina Maneca-Voinea, also of Romania. The latter scored a 13.700 but was docked points because the judges wrongly called her out of bounds on a turn. Sadly, Maneca-Voinea’s own coach didn’t appeal in time.
This decision is still being fought over by lawyers.
Meanwhile, Barbosu had her own bronze medal ceremony on August 16 in Bucharest. For her part, Barbosu doesn’t hold any ill will toward U.S. Gymnastics or Chiles and puts the blame entirely on the poor work of the judges.
DEI Controversy
Keeping track of all that back and forth is a form of mental gymnastics, but there’s yet another interesting cultural counterpoint worth highlighting. Jordan Chiles initially being in the bronze medal position represented a historic first — an all-black women’s gymnastics podium (gold went to Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade, silver to USA’s Simone Biles, and bronze to Chiles). We all know how the woke leftists love a good historic first. So what if part of the deciding factor to change Chiles’s score wasn’t due to a miscalculation but due to DEI malfeasance? Was this a scheme to keep a white competitor off the podium?
Chiles is a decorated Olympian and has absolutely earned her spot on Team USA. But her and Simone Biles’s bowing to Andrade added to the suspicion.
Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles showed love to Rebeca Andrade after she won her first gold medal of the Paris Olympics ❤️ pic.twitter.com/feXEvnPyCx
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) August 5, 2024
After admitting that bowing was her idea, Chiles told reporters, “So I felt like not only was it a black podium, I felt like people should get recognized the proper way, and bowing down to her was like giving her that recognition that she really deserved that medal.”
The Paris Olympics was pretty flagrant in its display of sacrilege and political statements. So it wouldn’t be surprising if Chiles only got the bronze for the “black podium” photo op. In that case, it really is an injustice to all athletes involved.
