American gymnast Jordan Chiles, who was stripped of her bronze medal in floor exercise from the 2024 Paris Olympics, has filed an appeal to the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland, where the Court of Arbitration for Sport is based.
"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," said Maurice M. Suh, Chiles' legal counsel, in a press release. "Every part of the Olympics, including the arbitration process, should stand for fair play."
On Aug. 5, Chiles was the last athlete to compete in the floor exercise event and scored a 13.666, initially placing her in fifth behind Romania's Ana Barbosu and Sabrina Maneca-Voinea. The latter two had a score of 13.700, but Barbosu had a higher execution score, so she originally won the bronze medal and started to celebrate.
Soon after, Chiles' coaches called for an inquiry, saying Chiles did not get credit for her tour jeté full. Her score got adjusted by 0.1, moving her up to third place.
It was one of the most shocking and dramatic moments from the Paris Olympics, but things did not end there. The Romanian gymnastics federation appealed to CAS, and it was determined Chiles' coaches made their inquiry four seconds past the one-minute limit.
After that decision was announced, the International Olympic Committee awarded Barbosu the bronze and asked Chiles to return her medal. U.S. gymnastics officials said they had video evidence showing "conclusively" that the inquiry had been filed on time, but CAS said the rules do not allow them to revisit a case after a decision becomes final.
In the appeal filed this week, Chiles' attorneys claim CAS violated her "right to be heard" by "refusing to consider the video evidence that showed her inquiry was submitted on time." They also argue that Hamid Gharavi, president of the CAS arbitration panel, had a potential conflict of interest because he "has acted as counsel for Romania for almost a decade and was actively representing Romania at the time of the CAS arbitration."
"Chiles was not given proper notice of the hearing and did not receive the necessary time and opportunity to prepare any defense—she was informed of the hearing only a few hours before it began," the press release reads. "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 chaos goes deeper than Barbosu and Chiles, as Maneca-Voinea was deducted 0.1 as a penalty for stepping out of bounds during her routine. However, she and the Romanian Gymnastics Federation filed an appeal with the Swiss Federal Tribunal in August saying video replay shows she stayed in bounds. Without the penalty, Maneca-Voinea would have received bronze with a score of 13.800.
Since August, the Romanian Gymnastics Federation said it did not agree with the decision of Chiles being stripped of her medal, and proposed all three gymnast receive bronze. However, the reallocation of medals is up to the International Olympic Committee.