The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has confirmed that the US gymnastic Jordan Chiles will be deposed of her bronze medal to the Romania’s Ana Barbosu. This comes after the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruled out an appeal lunched during the match on Monday by Chiles coach which saw her overtake and lead Barbosu on the podium.
Recall, Chiles had completed her routine and got a score of 13.666 which saw her placed 5th behind Barbosu and Maneca-Voinea who scored 13.700. However, the Chiles’ Team USA coach appealed to the judges to increase Chiles’ difficulty score as this is allowed in the game. Subsequently, the judges approved the appeal and more points were added to Chiles score making her secured the Bronze medal being new movement to the third position. This unprecedented upgrade has seen Chiles secure her third career Olympic medal (silver she won in Tokyo in 2021 and the team gold she helped the U. S). Also, this leads to one of the trending pictures of Paris Olympics was the emotional celebration scenes between Chiles and her superstar teammate Simon Biles.
Controversy
According to report, the Romanian Gymnastics Federation demanded CAS to review the procedure surrounding America’s appeal of Chiles’ score. However, according to the guidelines of the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG), coaches must lodge any appeal of a score within one minute of the score being posted.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruled that the US coach’s appeal was made in 1 minute, 4 seconds, just past the deadline. As a result, the appeal against Chiles was upheld and Cas requested everything should return to status quo with CAS deciding that Chiles’ score should be reduced back to 13.666 and the initial order of finish restored.
This scandal has become of the talking point in the social media. Chiles and her followers believed that she was unlucky to have been a victim of poor judgment from the match officials who if they had performed their functions properly would have saved the Team US Coach from raising an appeal in the first place.
According to Chiles’ sister Jazmin post on Instagram on Saturday: “Please keep Jordan (and my family) in your prayers. Racism is real, it exists, it is alive and well.”
“They have officially, five days later, stripped her of one of her medals. Not because she didn’t win, not because she was drugged, not because she stepped out of bounds. Not because she wasn’t good enough. But because the judges failed to give her difficulty and forced an inquiry to be made.”
The striping of the Chiles bronze medal could be partly be blamed on the Coach who should have known to adhere to the 1 minute allotted time to raise an appeal after all human referee could make marginal error but sometimes this turns to a major disaster.
