Current:Home > Contact-usJordan Chiles deserved Olympic bronze medal. And so much more-InfoLens
Jordan Chiles deserved Olympic bronze medal. And so much more
View Date:2025-01-11 17:43:47
Promising as the video evidence backing Jordan Chiles’ claim to her bronze medal is, it never should have come to this.
And nothing can ever undo the damage that’s been done or the heartache she’s suffered.
Her bronze medal on floor exercise at the Paris Games should be the crowning personal achievement of Chiles’ career, her first individual medal in two Olympic appearances. Instead, it’s been tainted by legal wranglings and online abuse, her joy and pride now forever colored by disappointment and hurt.
All because other people, people whose jobs it is to know better, screwed up in almost every way imaginable.
The International Gymnastics Federation. The Court of Arbitration for Sport. Even Romanian officials, who trampled over Chiles in their zeal to get for their athletes something they did not deserve.
Chiles and her coach followed the rules, as the video submitted with her appeal filed Monday so clearly shows. Yet Chiles is the one who’s been punished, stripped of her medal — for now — not because of anything she did but because of the incompetence and ineptitude of others.
“Jordan Chiles’ appeals present the international community with an easy legal question — will everyone stand by while an Olympic athlete who has done only the right thing is stripped of her medal because of fundamental unfairness in an ad-hoc arbitration process? The answer to that question should be no,” Maurice M. Suh, counsel for Chiles, said in the statement Monday announcing her appeal to the Swiss Federal Tribunal.
“Every part of the Olympics, including the arbitration process, should stand for fair play.”
And nothing about this process has been fair.
Chiles initially finished fifth in the floor exercise, her score of 13.666 putting her behind Romanians Ana Barbosu and Sabrina Maneca-Voineau. (The Romanians had identical scores of 13.7, but Barbosu placed higher because of a better execution score.) But Cecile Landi, who is Chiles’ personal coach in addition to being the U.S. coach in Paris, appealed her difficulty score, arguing Chiles had not been given full credit for a tour jete, a leap.
A review panel agreed, and the additional 0.100 elevated the American ahead of both Romanians into third place.
That’s when things went sideways.
Romania appealed, submitting several different arguments before settling on the claim that Chiles’ inquiry was filed too late. The Court of Arbitration for Sport sided with the Romanians, ruling that the official timing system showed Chiles’ inquiry had been made four seconds past the 60-second deadline.
But the rules are a gymnast has 60 seconds after a score is posted to make a verbal inquiry, not that the inquiry must show up in the system within 60 seconds. That might seem like splitting hairs, but it’s not. Common sense tells you making a verbal inquiry and registering it are not simultaneous, yet the CAS ruling made the assumption they were.
We know now they were not. The video shows Landi saying, “Inquiry for Jordan!” twice within the 60-second deadline. If there was a delay in registering it, that isn't Chiles' fault and can't be held against her.
As for why CAS didn’t have that video during its hearing, add that to the list of the tribunal’s failings.
Chiles, USA Gymnastics and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee didn’t know for three days that they were parties to the Romanians’ appeal because CAS was using either wrong or outdated emails. How this was possible, given the USOPC and CAS had been in frequent communication throughout the Games about a medals ceremony in Paris for U.S. figure skaters and the wrong emails were generating bounce-back messages, begs belief. You almost have to try to be that incompetent.
When the Americans finally were informed, it was less than 24 hours before the CAS hearing. There is no way to read the many documents in the case, analyze the arguments, craft a response and prepare for a hearing in that amount of time.
There also was no need to. Contrary to Romania’s claim about the need for a quick decision so the medals table would be accurate before the end of the Games, nothing demanded urgency in this case. The floor exercise medals had already been awarded. The gymnastics competition was over. No one’s ability to participate was at stake. There would have been no material difference in a decision made on Oct. 10 from one made on Aug. 10.
Except that maybe it would have given the CAS arbitrators time to have gotten it right. And Chiles wouldn’t have been put through an emotional wringer.
“My heart was broken,” she said last week during an appearance at the Forbes Power Women’s Summit.
This all could have been avoided. And even if Chiles does get the title of bronze medalist back, as she should, it can never make up for everything else she lost.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.
veryGood! (83188)
Related
- These Michael Kors’ Designer Handbags Are All Under $150 With an Extra 22% off for Singles’ Day
- James McBride's 'Heaven & Earth' is an all-American mix of prejudice and hope
- Vanderpump Rules Star Scheana Shay’s Under $40 Fashion Finds Are “Good as Gold”
- Search underway in Sequoia National Park for missing hiker on 1st solo backpacking trip
- Darren Criss on why playing a robot in 'Maybe Happy Ending' makes him want to cry
- Nightengale's Notebook: Dodgers running away in NL West with Dave Roberts' 'favorite team'
- They were alone in a fight to survive. Maui residents had moments to make life-or-death choices
- Climber Kristin Harila responds after critics accuse her of walking past dying sherpa to set world record
- Ready-to-eat meat, poultry recalled over listeria risk: See list of affected products
- Maui rescue teams search ruins 'full of our loved ones' as death toll climbs: Live updates
Ranking
- Flurry of contract deals come as railroads, unions see Trump’s election looming over talks
- Doctors struggle with how to help patients with heart conditions after COVID-19
- Bryce Young limited during Panthers' preseason debut as Jets win without Aaron Rodgers
- Russian fighter jet crashes at Michigan air show; video shows pilot, backseater eject
- Saks Fifth Avenue’s holiday light display in Manhattan changing up this season
- Michael Oher, Subject of Blind Side, Says Tuohy Family Earned Millions After Lying About Adoption
- Police questioned over legality of Kansas newspaper raid in which computers, phones seized
- Dozens injured at Travis Scott concert in Rome's Circus Maximus as gig prompts earthquake concerns
Recommendation
-
New Yorkers vent their feelings over the election and the Knicks via subway tunnel sticky notes
-
Clarence Avant, 'The Black Godfather' of music, dies at 92
-
Morgan Freeman on rescuing a Black WWII tank battalion from obscurity
-
Georgia jail fails to let out inmates who are due for release and met bail, citing crashed database
-
Homes of Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce burglarized, per reports
-
Family, preservationists work to rescue endangered safe haven along Route 66
-
Publisher of small Kansas newspaper calls police raid Gestapo tactic but police insist it was justified
-
Pilot and crew member safely eject before Soviet-era fighter jet crashes at Michigan air show