People Magazine

Jordan Chiles and Ana Bărbosu pictured with the exact same bronze medal; one that is being fought for by both sides.

On the day of the 2024 Paris Olympics women’s gymnastics floor exercise final, I was deathly sick. 

Even so, I still forced myself to wake up at an early time when I was not at school: 8:20 a.m. 

I waddled upstairs, sat in front of the living room television, and tuned in to watch the last event of women’s gymnastics. 

Before the floor final, the women of the USA gymnastics team had been dominating their competition. In the team all-around competition, they won gold in superior fashion, finishing almost six points ahead of the silver medal team. In gymnastics terms, six points ahead at the Olympics is equivalent to an NFL team winning the Super Bowl by 30 points. Following that success, powerhouse gymnasts Simone Biles and Suni Lee competed in the individual all-around final, securing gold and bronze, respectively. Biles had also qualified for the vault final, where she landed gold on the podium after completing the Biles II—a Yurchenko double pike, possibly the most difficult skill in all of women’s gymnastics. 

Therefore, Biles was favored to win the gold medal in floor exercise. However, she wasn’t without competition, despite being the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) of gymnastics. Brazilian gymnast Rebeca Andrade has been giving Biles a run for her money for years, but this year’s Olympics were where her talent and work ethic showed off. Floor exercise is one of Andrade’s best events, so she was expected to win silver. However, the bronze medal had multiple unknown possibilities for takers. Would it be Ana Bărbosu or Sabrina Maneca-Voinea of Romania? Manila Esposito of Italy? Or Jordan Chiles of the United States, a longtime individual medal hopeful?

With all these thoughts in mind, I watched the competition with anticipation and nervousness, unsure who would successfully make it onto the podium. As learned at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, when Biles pulled out of competition due to mental health reasons, the competition isn’t over until it’s over. 

Rebeca Andrade started the rotation with a near-perfect routine, scoring 14.166 with minor errors. Simone Biles surprisingly stepped out of bounds twice, once on her Biles I, a double layout with a half twist, and secondly on her punch full into a double twisting double somersault. Even though she had the highest difficulty value on floor exercise in the whole competition, the total penalty for going out of bounds was six-tenths, which put her behind Andrade in the silver medal position. Last to go was Jordan Chiles, who was ready to perform with her Beyonce-inspired routine. All in all, it was stellar, except for on the opening pass—a double layout with a full twist—where she lost control of the landing and bounced forward. Besides that, she performed her heart out and finished with a flourish to mark the end of her 2024 Olympic Games. 

A few minutes after saluting the judges, she obtained her score of 13.666, which dropped her to fifth place. She seemed disappointed but accepted it nonetheless. Romanian gymnast Ana Bărbosu was announced to have won the bronze medal. It would’ve been the first medal in Romanian gymnastics since the 2012 London Games. 

However, it was not to be.

About a minute later, after the final standings were already announced, Chiles’s score had changed. Due to an inquiry from her coach, Cecile Landi, the score had increased in execution value by a tenth, finalizing her score as 13.766, which put her in the bronze medal position. Upon seeing the news on the Jumbotron, Chiles burst into passionate tears and began celebrating, with Biles and Landi giving her hugs and cheering. 

Understandably, Bărbosu was in shock. She had been raising the Romanian flag on the floor, proud of her accomplishment, until it was taken away in seconds. She broke down in tears and walked out of the arena being consoled by her coach.

Now, although I was extremely happy for Chiles and the USA, there was no doubt that Bărbosu had been wronged. The judges had made the horrific error of letting Bărbosu believe she had medaled even when there was an unsolved inquiry in progress. Additionally, another Romanian gymnast, Sabrina Maneca-Voinea, was flagged for a step out of bounds when video evidence shows she never stepped past the line. A penalty of one-tenth was wrongfully taken away, but without it, she would have been ahead of both Bărbosu and Chiles in third place. With all these terrible mistakes, one way or another, it seemed to me that the judges present would have to face consequences. 

Quite the opposite occurred. 

A few days after the heartwarming medal ceremony where Chiles and Biles bowed down in a beautiful salute to gold medal winner Andrade—the first time three Black women have stood on the same medal podium in a women’s gymnastics event—Chiles flew home to America. She was greeted in New York City, New York to a hero’s welcome, with thousands of adoring fans admiring her and her incredible accomplishments from the Games. With both her gold and bronze medals around her neck, she looked positively joyful.

That joy lasted for two days.

On Aug. 10, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) notified USA Gymnastics that they had ruled that the inquiry that was filed to increase Chiles’s difficulty score value was rescinded. The court ruled this in response to an appeal from the Romanian Olympic Committee for Bărbosu to receive the medal. They claimed Landi’s inquiry to change her gymnast’s score was four seconds after the minute deadline for inquiries, which the CAS believed. Chiles’s original score of 13.666 was back in order, meaning she was kicked back to fifth place. Chiles was ordered to send her bronze medal back to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which would then send the medal to Romania. 

Heartbroken, Chiles removed herself from social media to process the loss. Subsequently, thousands of people began to flood her Instagram posts with hateful, racist comments about how Bărbosu deserved the medal. Despite the resentment, her situation also elicited a large outpouring of love and support worldwide.

With this support, Chiles and USA Gymnastics knew that they were not about to go down without a fight. A day later, USA Gymnastics received video evidence that displayed Landi’s inquiry was processed 47 seconds after Chiles’s first score was released, remaining within the minute deadline. Therefore, they sent a new appeal to the CAS demanding that Chiles would get to keep the medal, or perhaps share it with Ana Bărbosu and Sabrina Maneca-Voinea.

Of course, the second appeal was also rejected.

Bărbosu acquired the bronze medal (again) in a reallocation ceremony held in Bucharest, Romania on August 16. 

As the medal was placed around her neck, Bărbosu said, “I want to believe that the day will come when all three of us [Bărbosu, Chiles, and Maneca-Voinea] will receive a bronze medal” (The Athletic). 

As of Sept. 16, exactly a month later, Chiles, USA Gymnastics, and the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee have asked the Swiss Supreme Court (Switzerland is the home country of the IOC and CAS) to overturn the ruling made by the CAS.  In the appeal, Chiles claims that the CAS refused her right to be heard after they refused to look at the video evidence proving her inquiry correct. She also argues that the CAS has a conflict of interest since the organization has had past legal ties with Romania. 

Since the investigation is ongoing, there is no telling whether all three gymnasts will be awarded a medal each or if Maneca-Voinea and Chiles will have to succumb to the unfortunate legal system that failed them as athletes. Under the IOC’s rules, the only two reasons an athlete’s medal should ever be taken away is if they cheated or were caught doping. Chiles did neither. 

In this case, the athletes did absolutely nothing wrong. Bărbosu, Chiles, and Maneca-Voinea just want justice for themselves and each other. They deserve to see bronze medals around their necks, free from controversy and racism. Additionally, it’s not as if Olympic medals have never been shared. At the 2020 Tokyo Games, Gianmarco Tamberi of Italy and Qatar’s Mutaz Barshim shared the gold medal in the high jump. They made history by sharing the first Olympic track and field gold medal since the 1912 Olympic Games. Evidently, having three bronze medals awarded to different athletes is completely plausible.

Now it’s in the hands of the officials, to see if the people in charge can truly realize the consequences of their actions and set matters right.