The fight over Jordan Chiles’s bronze medal is barely about gymnastics (2024)

The 2024 Olympics are officially done, but there’s one bronze medal that’s still hanging in the balance.

That medal was initially awarded to American gymnast Jordan Chiles. Chiles, who won gold with the US team in Paris, placed third in the floor event finals on August 5 — what feels like eons ago in Olympic time. But this past Saturday, on the eve of the final day of the Games, the International Olympic Committee asked Chiles to give back her bronze, giving it to runner-up Romanian Ana Barbosu.

Olympic officials asking an athlete to give their medal back is an uncommon occurrence, but what makes Chiles’s case even more bizarre is that it’s largely the judges’ fault. Chiles was initially underscored, then scored properly, and then told nearly a week later that her correct score shouldn’t count because her coaches didn’t catch the error within one minute. That’s the simple reason why her medal is now being taken away.

This kerfuffle isn’t going to do any favors for the credibility of gymnastics, a sport that’s already scored subjectively. The fact that Team USA is appealing the decision will only draw out this negative press. Unfortunately for Chiles, she’s now caught in a crossfire that’s become much nastier and uglier as this bronze medal saga unfolds.

If there’s one thing to understand about Chiles’s bronze medal saga, it’s that it has barely anything to do with the level of gymnastics Chiles or her competitors performed at the floor event finals last week. Chiles’s powerful tumbling passes, landings, and leaps on the apparatus are all secondary to the technicalities.

During the event finals for floor, Chiles was originally given a score of 13.666. Team USA and Chiles’s coach, Cecile Landi, filed an inquiry with a judging panel arguing that they had incorrectly scored the routine and didn’t give Chiles credit for a split leap called a “tour jete full.” The judges reviewed and agreed with that inquiry, and upped Chiles’s score to 13.766.

The 13.766 was high enough to get Chiles a bronze, pushing Romanians Barbosu and Sabrina Maneca-Voinea off the podium (both gymnasts scored 13.700, but Barbosu won the tiebreaker).

While the Romanian team fielded multiple inquiries, including one about Maneca-Voinea’s score, the major dispute that triggered this medal debacle is about the timing of Team USA’s scoring inquiry. The official rules state that Landi’s inquiry of Chiles’s score had to be filed within one minute of her score. Romania argued that Landi made the inquiry one minute and four seconds after getting Chiles’s score. Those four seconds, Romania argued, put the US over the time limit and should have nullified Chiles’s new score.

The International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruled in Romania’s favor. Officially and as of this moment, Barbosu’s score of 13.700 is credited as the third-place bronze medal finish and Chiles’s score has been pushed back down to 13.666. To reflect the ruling, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) ordered Chiles to return her bronze medal.

In response to the IOC’s ruling, Team USA announced that it had submitted additional evidence to the CAS that the inquiry was filed within the time limit — not once, but twice. “The time-stamped, video evidence submitted by USA Gymnastics Sunday evening shows Landi first stated her request to file an inquiry at the inquiry table 47 seconds after the score was posted, followed by a second statement 55 seconds after the score was originally posted,” the federation said in a statement.

On Monday, USA Gymnastics said in a statement that it was notified by the CAS that its “rules do not allow for an arbitral award to be reconsidered even when conclusive new evidence is presented.” USA Gymnastics said it would continue to pursue additional avenues for an award for Chiles.

It’s worth remembering that the fundamental flaw in Chiles’s score is a judge’s error, an error that judges admitted to. Chiles’s correct score is Chiles’s correct score. Gymnastics isn’t track and field and scores aren’t determined by clock, but there are set criteria — including the execution of included moves — that need to be evaluated in a final score. Arguing that it took four seconds too long to fix an error that the judges themselves actually introduced feels more at home in some kind of retail customer service death spiral than an allegedly prestigious Olympic sport where judges and official timekeepers should be able to follow the predetermined protocol.

This mess, of course, doesn’t happen in a bubble.

In fact, this medal kerfuffle undoes an Olympic milestone: Chiles, her teammate Simone Biles, and Brazil’s Rebecca Andrade were the first all-Black podium in the games’ history. While that was a triumph for many and seen as growth for the sport, it’s not exactly a coincidence that racists and far-right personalities have latched onto the story of the rescinded bronze.

Like many sports, gymnastics itself has a thorny history of racism and treatment of Black athletes. It wasn’t too long ago that Biles faced racist attacks, ranging from belittling her skills to coded talk about how the multiple gold medal winner made the sport less elegant with her power. Black female athletes like Serena Williams have also faced similar discrimination in their sports.

The aforementioned right-wing personalities and racists are now peddling narratives about how the Olympics cheated white gymnasts out of medals, or saying that Black athletes like Chiles are cheaters themselves. Pundit Matt Walsh called the 2024 games “the DEI Olympics.” It didn’t take long for those sentiments to metastasize into disgusting behavior, as racists began personally attacking Chiles.

Amid the medal returning saga, Jordan said she was taking a break from social media. Chiles’s mom Gina posted on Twitter that her daughter was receiving racist attacks:

Seeing Chiles receive these attacks and have to shut down her public accounts is just depressingly bleak. Medal or no medal, Chiles’s Olympics — a once-in-a-lifetime experience, twice if you’re as fit and skilled as Chiles — will be marred by the racism and bigotry she faced following the judges’ mistakes.

All Jordan Chiles did was compete, and she did so under the impression that she would be judged fairly. The people running Olympic gymnastics didn’t allow her that opportunity.

Update, August 12, 2024, at 5:20 pm ET: This story was published on August 12 and has been updated with news that the CAS will not be entertaining Team USA’s appeal.