By: Lauren Wu
On August 13, 2024 in Lausanne, Switzerland, the Court of Arbitration for Sport, an organization to solve problems where athletes don’t approve of what judges decide, declared that Jordan Chiles, an American gymnast, should return her bronze Paris Olympics medal to Ana Bărbosu of Romania. This was because Chiles’ inquiry about her score was submitted four seconds late.
On August 5, Bărbosu received a 13.700, placing her third in the floor exercise (FX) final and Chiles received a 13.666, placing her fifth in the final. The floor exercise consists of twists, handsprings, and somersaults, just to name a few. Chiles’ coach (Cecile Landi) thought that the judges didn’t give Chiles enough points for a leap, so her difficulty score was 5.8 instead of 5.9. Her coach filed an inquiry to the judges about Chiles’ difficulty score. After the judges thought about it, they said that she should have gotten the extra tenth because of the leap. They changed her score to 13.766, which was higher than third place Ana Bărbosu.
The next day, on August 6, the Romanian Gymnastics Federation filed an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and said that Chiles’ inquiry was four seconds late and shouldn’t have counted. The CAS agreed and ruled Chiles’ initial score of 13.666 should remain. The CAS then turned to the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG), the sport’s governing body, to determine the final rankings and medal reassignment.
The FIG changed the results as the CAS recommended, placing Bărbosu in third place. They then left the decision of who would get the bronze medal to the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The IOC said that they would return the bronze medal to Bărbosu.
Link-https://www.latimes.com/sports/olympics/story/2024-08-11/jordan-chiles-asked-to-give-up-bronze-medal