Gymnast Jordan Chiles appeals to Swiss supreme court for her Olympic bronze medal

Jordan Chiles, the American gymnast whose Olympic bronze medal was revoked by an arbitration court days after the floor exercise final in Paris, has appealed her case to Switzerland’s highest federal court.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 turns of events at the Summer Olympics: A viral and historic medal ceremony — the first time three Black women had stood on the same medal podium in an Olympic gymnastics event — was undone days later when an arbitration court determined a last-minute inquiry that had boosted Chiles’ score into third place was filed a few seconds too late.

Even as U.S. gymnastics officials said they could provide video evidence that showed “conclusively” that the inquiry had been filed on time, the Court of Arbitration for Sport declined to revisit the case. Olympic officials declared they would “reallocate” the bronze medal to Ana Barbosu of Romania, who was awarded the medal at a ceremony in Bucharest last month.

Now, Chiles has asked the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland to order CAS to re-evaluate the case.

“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, legal counsel for Chiles, said in a statement. “Every part of the Olympics, including the arbitration process, should stand for fair play.”

The appeal asks that CAS ruling be vacated and the case reconsidered. A retrial, her law firm said, would allow Chiles to prepare a defense and present evidence, “including the video footage showing that her coach’s scoring inquiry was submitted on time.”

When her score was first posted at the competition on Aug. 5, it appeared Chiles had finished in fifth place with a score of 13.666, just shy of Barbosu, who had scored 13.7. But Chiles’ coach believed the judges had scored her incorrectly and filed an inquiry shortly after. The judges agreed, adjusting Chiles’ score upward by a tenth of a point to 13.766.

In the days that followed, the Romanian gymnastics federation appealed to the independent arbitration court. The CAS panel determined that the inquiry had been filed four seconds too late and revised Chiles' score back to 13.666. Gymnastics rules require the final gymnast of a competition to file an inquiry within one minute.

Chiles was heartbroken, the gymnast has said. She faced a torrent of racist online abuse over the dispute. The ordeal left her feeling as though more than a bronze medal had been taken from her, she said at a Forbes summit last week.

“I followed the rules. My coach followed the rules. We did everything totally, completely right,” she said. “I feel like they just took that all away.”

In her appeal to the Swiss court, Chiles also asked that CAS remove arbitrator Hamid Gharavi from any future hearing. Gharavi, the presiding arbitrator on the Chiles hearing, is currently providing legal counsel to Romania in other international proceedings, the New York Times reported last month. (The court told the Times that Gharavi had disclosed the work and that none of the parties had objected to his participation as chair.)

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

Copyright 2024, NPR

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