USA Gymnastics Loses Appeal for Chiles to Keep Olympic Bronze Medal
USA Gymnastics said Monday that the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) will not reconsider an arbitral award for Jordan Chiles, effectively rebuffing an appeal for Chiles to keep her Paris 2024 bronze medal for the women's floor routine....
Facts
- USA Gymnastics said Monday that the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) will not reconsider an arbitral award for Jordan Chiles, effectively rebuffing an appeal for Chiles to keep her Paris 2024 bronze medal for the women's floor routine.[1][2]
- This comes as the Olympian was asked to return the medal after an arbitral panel partially upheld on Saturday a petition by one of her Romanian opponents, Ana Bărbosu, to restore the initial finishing order of the final on Aug. 5.[3][4]
- In response, the sport's national governing body pledged to work full-time to ensure 'just scoring' for Chiles and appeal to the Swiss Federal Tribunal. Meanwhile, the independence of the panel has been questioned amid reports that its head serves as legal counsel to Romania.[5][6][7]
- Chiles originally finished fifth with 13.666 points — behind Bărbosu and her teammate Sabrina Maneca-Voinea, who tied with 13.700 each — but jumped to third with 13.766 minutes later as her coach filed an inquiry for judges to revise her score.[8][9]
- Romania then filed an appeal to the CAS claiming the inquiry was submitted four seconds after the one-minute deadline for the last gymnast competing on an event. According to new video evidence, however, Team USA submitted the appeal in time.[10][11]
- Romania's gymnastic federation claimed on Monday that USA Gymnastics had agreed to share the bronze medal between Chiles, Bărbosu, and Maneca-Voinea — a move with precedence in previous Olympics.[12][13][14]
Sources: [1]SI, [2]Olympics.com, [3]Associated Press, [4]Court of Arbitration for Sport, [5]New York Post, [6]FOX News, [7]International Institute for Conflict Prevention & Resolution, [8]CNN, [9]Business Insider, [10]USA Today, [11]New York Times, [12]Forbes, [13]NPR Online News and [14]Federatia Romana de Gimnastica.
Narratives
- Narrative A, as provided by Washington Post. The decision regarding Jordan Chiles' bronze medal points to CAS being a secretive court full of cronies and insiders. Given that the so-called presiding arbitrator has long worked for Romania, an obviously interested party in this case, USA Gymnastics has no other option than appealing to the Swiss courts against CAS.
- Narrative B, as provided by Olympics.com. The rules are harsh but they are the rules. While Team USA may have filed an inquiry on the behalf of Jordan Chiles into the difficulty score of her floor exercise routine in good faith, this request failed to meet the one-minute deadline and must be considered invalid.
