Gymnast Jordan Chiles Appeals to Swiss Court for Olympic Bronze Medal : NPR

American gymnast Jordan Chiles is proud of the bronze medal she won in the women’s floor final at the Paris Summer Olympics on Aug. 5, 2024. On Monday, her lawyers filed a formal appeal with a Swiss court after a late appeal led to her being stripped of the medal.

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American gymnast Jordan Chiles, who was stripped of her Olympic bronze medal by the Court of Arbitration for Sport just days after the floor exercise final in Paris, has appealed her case to Switzerland’s highest federal court.

It was one of the most dramatic events of the Summer Olympics: The historic medal ceremony — the first time three black women had stood on the same medal podium at an Olympic gymnastics event — was called off days later when the arbitration court ruled that a last-minute investigation that had boosted Chiles’ score to third place had been filed seconds too late.

Although USA Gymnastics officials said they were able to present video evidence that “definitively” proved the investigation was conducted in a timely manner, CAS declined to reconsider the case. Olympic officials said they would “re-award” the bronze medal to Ana Barbosu of Romania, who received the medal at a ceremony in Bucharest last month.

Now, Chiles has asked the Swiss Federal Supreme Court to order the Court of Arbitration for Sport to re-evaluate the case.

“Jordan Chiles’ appeals pose an easy legal question to the international community – should everyone stand by while an Olympic athlete who did nothing but the right thing is stripped of her medal because of the fundamental injustice of an interim arbitration process? The answer to that question must be no,” Maurice M. So, Chiles’ legal counsel, said in a statement. “Every part of the Olympic Games, including the arbitration process, must champion fair play.”

The lawsuit seeks to overturn the CAS ruling and retry the case. Her law firm said a retrial would allow Chiles to prepare her defense and present evidence, “including video footage showing that her coach’s point inquiry was made on time.”

Jordan Chiles competes in the women’s floor exercise final in gymnastics during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games on August 5, 2024.

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When her score was first posted for the competition on August 5, Chiles appeared to have placed fifth with a score of 13.666, narrowly missing Barboso’s 13.7. But Chiles’ coach thought the judges had given her an incorrect score and filed an inquiry shortly after. The judges agreed, adjusting Chiles’ score up by a tenth of a point to 13.766.

In the days that followed, the Romanian Gymnastics Federation appealed to the independent Court of Arbitration. The arbitration panel ruled that the inquiry was four seconds too late, and adjusted Chiles’ score to 13.666. Gymnastics rules state that the last athlete in any competition must file an inquiry within one minute.

The gymnast said Chiles was heartbroken. She had faced a barrage of racist abuse online over the dispute. She said the ordeal made her feel like more than just her bronze medal had been taken away from her. At the Forbes Summit last week“I followed the rules. My coaches followed the rules. We did everything exactly right,” she said. “I feel like they took all of that away from me.”

In its appeal to the Swiss court, Chile also asked CAS to exclude arbitrator Hamed Gharavi from any future hearing. Gharavi, the lead arbitrator in Chile’s hearing, is currently advising Romania in other international proceedings, including the Venezuela case. New York Times Reported last month(The court told The Times that Graffi had disclosed the work and that none of the parties had objected to his participation as chairman of the committee.)

“From start to finish, the proceedings leading to the CAS panel’s decision were fundamentally unfair, and it is no surprise that they resulted in an unfair decision,” Gibson Dunn, the law firm representing Chiles in the appeal, said in a statement.