Team USA and gymnast Jordan Chiles didn’t let the withdrawal of her Olympic bronze medal stop them from showing off her team gold on Tuesday.
In a New Year’s Eve post to celebrate the medals that the US claimed at the Paris Olympics this year, the team included a photo of Chiles holding the gold medal that she and her American teammates won in the women’s team event. Chiles was the only gymnast included in the collage.
Chiles re-posted the photo on her personal Instagram story later on Tuesday.
The 23-year-old gymnast is currently involved in an appeal against a Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) decision that dropped her from third place in the event to fifth in the women’s floor exercise final.
Romania’s Ana Barbosu initially earned a higher score than Chiles after the American finished her routine. Then, after a US coach’s request, judges reviewed the footage, changed the score and bumped Chiles up to third place, sparking the initial controversy and fierce backlash from Romanians.
The decision to give the medal to Chiles instead resulted in the first All-Black podium in the history of Olympic gymnastics, as she joined teammate Simone Biles and Brazil’s Rebecca Andrade.
But then, on the last day of the Olympics, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruled that the Chiles appeal was submitted past the one-minute deadline, and changed her score to drop her back into fifth place. The next day, on Aug. 11, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) determined that Chiles must return the medal.
However, after the end of the Olympics in August, USA Today reported that Chiles and the rest of the U.S. Olympic team had “no intention” of returning the medal, as they continue to appeal the IOC’s decision.
Chiles’ lawyers have argued that her coach did in fact make the request in time and that there is video evidence to prove it, and has also indicated that the official who made the decision to strip Chiles’ medal had ties to Romania.
“Chiles asks the Supreme Court to find that the CAS decision was procedurally deficient for two reasons,” Chiles’ lawyers said in a statement, according to Olympics.com.
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“First, CAS violated Chiles’ fundamental ‘right to be heard’ by refusing to consider the video evidence that showed her inquiry was submitted on time – in direct contradiction to the findings in CAS’ decision.
“Second, the entire CAS proceeding was unfair because Chiles was not properly informed that Hamid G. Gharavi, the President of the CAS panel that revoked Chiles’s bronze medal and awarded it instead to a Romanian gymnast, had a serious conflict of interest: Mr. Gharavi has acted as counsel for Romania for almost a decade and was actively representing Romania at the time of the CAS arbitration.”
Chiles has also filed an appeal in the Swiss Federal Supreme Court to overturn the CAS decision. She argued that she was not given a fair opportunity to defend herself and that the CAS did not properly consider video evidence.
Chiles and her teammates have been outspoken about the emotional toll that losing the medal has had on her in the months following the end of the Olympics.
Chiles gave her first sit-down interview about the incident this week during a panel at the Forbes Power Women’s Summit 2024 in September. The gymnast choked up and teared up when she was asked about the topic.
“To me, everything that has gone on is not about the medal, it’s about, you know, my skin color,” Chiles said.
Chiles previously claimed she was facing “racially driven attacks” from social media users in a statement posted to X on Aug. 15. When Chiles won the bronze medal, it resulted in the first gymnastics podium in Olympic history that featured three black contestants.
“It’s about the fact that there were things that have led up to this position of being an athlete and I felt like everything has been stripped.”
The controversy has brought international scrutiny upon the judges who scored the event. The Center of Arbitration for Sport’s (CAS) and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) released a joint statement on Aug. 15 condemning the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) and the judging crew for the outcome.
“If the FIG had put such a mechanism or arrangement in place, a great deal of heartache would have been avoided,” the CAS’ ad-hoc panel said in a release. “The Panel expresses the hope that the FIG will draw the consequences of this case, in relation to these three extraordinary Athletes and also for other Athletes and their supporting personnel, in the future, so that this never happens again.”
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