U.S. Olympian Jordan Chiles broke down in tears during an interview Wednesday and insisted that the reason Olympics officials took away her bronze medal in Paris was because of racism.
Chiles got caught up in one of the worst scoring snafus in the 2024 international games. She was awarded the bronze after her coach disputed her scoring, but then that award was rescinded, and her original losing score returned to the records.
In the initial scoring, Romania’s Ana Barbosu won the bronze medal, edging Chiles out and into fifth place. However, after reviewing the footage of her routine, the judges decided that they had gotten the numbers wrong and boosted Chiles’s score to give her bronze placement. Naturally, the move caused the Romanian team to protest.
Finally, on the very last day of the Paris games, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruled that the original scoring was correct, dropping Chiles back to fifth place and taking her out of contention for a medal. The matter was also deemed closed and the committee announced that there would be no more deliberations on the matter.
This week, Chiles revisited the drama and broke down in tears during a panel discussion at the Forbes Power Women’s Summit 2024, Fox News reported.
“To me, everything that has gone on is not about the medal. It’s about, you know, my skin color,” Chiles exclaimed.
She went on to claim that the attacks on social media are what drove the Olympics to take her medal away. Chiles insisted that racists were upset that it was the first time in history that the gold, silver, and bronze winners standing at the gymnastics podium were all black.
“It’s about the fact that there were things that have led up to this position of being an athlete, and I felt like everything has been stripped,” she added accusingly.
Chiles added that she is feeling just as devastated now as she did in 2018 when she endured an abusive coach.
“I felt like back in 2018 when I did lose the love of the sport. I’ve lost it again. I just did felt like there wasn’t a lot of people supporting me who I thought could support me in that situation. I felt like I was really left in the dark,” Chiles insisted.
“I was in a situation of dealing with the coach, who emotionally and verbally abused me. I didn’t have the ability to use my voice or be heard,” she said.
Chiles also claimed that she and her coach “followed the rules” at the Olympics.
“I made history and I will always continue to make history, it’s something I rightfully did, I followed the rules, my coach followed the rules, we did everything that was totally and completely right,” Chiles exclaimed.
She also seemed to say that she still has the bronze medal and has not given it back as instructed by the International Olympic Committee, and has “no intention” of giving it back.
Despite the rulings over the scoring, Chiles and the U.S. team are still trying to take further action to restore Chiles to her third-place finish.
The judging crew has also been criticized by the Center of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) for the mess the competition made. The two groups recently issued a statement excoriating the judges for the controversy.
“If the FIG had put such a mechanism or arrangement in place, a great deal of heartache would have been avoided,” the CAS wrote in a press release. “The Panel expresses the hope that the FIG will draw the consequences of this case, in relation to these three extraordinary Athletes and also for other Athletes and their supporting personnel, in the future, so that this never happens again.”
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