Last Monday, American gymnast Jordan Chiles officially finished 5th place in the floor exercise at the Paris Olympics.
She was the last gymnast to compete, so the scoring was done and the Romanian gymnast was celebrating her bronze medal ... but then Jordan's coach made an appeal to the officials (something allowed within the rules).
After reviewing, Chiles won the bronze.
Romania's Ana Barbosu was devastated:
But Jordan Chiles was elated:
Since then, the Romanian team has been in the ear of the Olympic officials, making all sorts of appeals of their own.
Social media has been divided on the issue as well, saying that Romanian Sabrina Maneca-Voinea would have finished in at least 3rd after the re-tallying if she had not been docked for stepping out of bounds.
The Romanian team's main accusation is that the US coach waited too long for the appeal.
The International Olympic Committee agreed:
But the American team is fighting back:
The American gymnastics federation said in a statement Sunday that new video evidence showed an inquiry was made within the necessary International Gymnastics Federation (FIG)'s deadline to the judges, which resulted in Chiles' score change by 0.1 points ...
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) said earlier Sunday that Chiles should return her medal.
'USA Gymnastics on Sunday formally submitted a letter and video evidence to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, conclusively establishing that Head Coach Cecile Landi's request to file an inquiry was submitted 47 seconds after the publishing of the score, within 1-minute deadline required by FIG rule,' the organization said.
If I were Jordan, I would go full Republic of Texas, hold up that bronze medal I earned with my score and tell the IOC to "come and take it!"
If the coach made the appeal too late, why didn't the judges say that at the time?
They want to take away a medal now, days later? Yeesh.
'The basis for the CAS ruling on Friday striking down the inquiry was that "The inquiry submitted on behalf of Ms. Jordan Chiles in the Final of the women's floor exercise was raised after the conclusion of the one-minute deadline provided by article 8.5 of the 2024 FIG Technical Regulations and is determined to be without effect,'" the organization added.
'The time-stamped video evidence submitted by USA Gymnastics Sunday evening shows Landi first stated her request to file an inquiry at the inquiry table 47 seconds after the score is posted followed by a second statement 55 seconds after the score was originally posted.'
