Over the Summer, the 2024 Paris Olympics took place. For America, gymnastics has been one of the sports we’ve excelled at over recent years. Especially women’s gymnastics, when Jordan Chiles, Simon Biles, and Suni Lee took the floor, carrying a lot of weight on their shoulders. When Chiles stepped up to compete in the women’s artistic floor exercises, America was excited to see what she had to offer. According to the Washington Post, Chiles originally placed 5th overall. However, her coaches did not agree with this placement and decided to challenge it. The judges revised the scores and gave Jordan a higher difficulty rating, this put her in bronze medal contention. This bronze was going to be her first event medal.
Regardless of the new placement, the original third-place medalist, Ana Bǎrbosu believed that the IOC (International Olympic Committee) had botched her advantage. The Romanian Federation soon found out that the Americans had filed their claim 4 seconds too late, after the 1-minute deadline that states you can challenge in that time frame. According to the written rules, “The person designated to receive the verbal inquiry has to record the time of receiving it, either in writing or electronically, and this starts the procedure.” This meant that the bronze medal would be stripped away from Chiles. The bronze medal would have been historic because it was going to be the first time 3 black women stood on that podium. Even though this seems a bit strange, Chiles’ coaches did not object to it at the time. According to CNN, Jordan calls it “one of the most challenging moments of my career.” Jordan vowed to keep fighting after this instance, and that she has.
Many people believe that the challenge of the scoring of Chiles was racially motivated. This is because Chiles is of African American and Latina descent, and Ana Bǎrbosu was a white woman from Romania. Jordan went on to say to Rolling Stone Magazine, “It’s not about the medal. It’s about my skin color. It’s about the fact there were things that have led up to this position of being an athlete. And I felt like everything has been stripped” With the light of new evidence, it was proved that the Americans did submit the challenging 47 seconds after, which meant that were indeed inside of the 1-minute mark. However, the IOC did not do anything to defend America and give Jordan her medal back.
But this isn’t the first time the Olympics have done something sketchy regarding medals and allowing suspicious countries to compete. Some examples of this mostly happened in the Sydney 2000 Olympic games. Chinese gymnast Dong Fangxiao won a bronze medal in the team competition, but a decade later, it was revealed that she had falsified her age and was under the minimum age requirement for Olympic gymnasts (16). As a result, the Chinese team was stripped of its bronze medal. Marion Jones won five medals at the 2000 Olympics (three gold, two bronze), but in 2007, she admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs and was stripped of all her medals.
Now, Jordan Chiles is still fighting for her recognition after these events.