Jordan Chiles and her lawyers have filed an appeal with the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland, relating to her performance in the artistic gymnastics women’s floor exercise at the Olympic Games Paris 2024.
In a statement released on Monday (16 September), the American’s legal team said they were aiming “to overturn a decision by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) that stripped her of her bronze medal.”
Chiles was initially presented with the bronze following the competition on 5 August, recording a score of 13.766 after her coach Cecile Landi successfully lodged an appeal that resulted in a 0.1 difficulty score increase, which lifted the USA gymnast from fifth to third position, passing Romania’s Sabrina Voinea and Ana Barbosu..
After a hearing requested by Romanian officials, the on-floor appeal by Landi was voided by CAS, who stated that the coach’s appeal came four seconds after the time limit of 60 seconds for scoring inquiries.
This reverted Chiles’ score to 13.666 and dropped her back to fifth, with the bronze medal awarded to Barbosu.
USA Gymnastics (USAG) formally submitted a letter and video evidence to CAS contesting its ruling and requested that the CAS decision be revised and Chiles’ bronze-medal score of 13.766 reinstated. USAG later announced the CAS arbitration panel had notified them it would not reconsider its decision.
“Chiles asks the Supreme Court to find that the CAS decision was procedurally deficient for two reasons,” the statement from her legal team on Monday said.
“First, CAS violated Chiles’s fundamental “right to be heard” by refusing to consider the video evidence that showed her inquiry was submitted on time—in direct contradiction to the findings in CAS’s decision.
“Second, the entire CAS proceeding was unfair because Chiles was not properly informed that Hamid G. Gharavi, the President of the CAS panel that revoked Chiles’s bronze medal and awarded it instead to a Romanian gymnast, had a serious conflict of interest: Mr. Gharavi has acted as counsel for Romania for almost a decade and was actively representing Romania at the time of the CAS arbitration.”
“Today’s appeal filing was supported by the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC), which filed a letter in support of Chiles’s appeal.”
USAG also released a statement on Monday, saying: “USA Gymnastics supports the appeal submitted today by Jordan Chiles at the Swiss Federal Tribunal as we made a collective, strategic decision to have Jordan lead the initial filing. USAG is closely coordinating with Jordan and her legal team and will make supportive filings with the court in the continued pursuit of justice for Jordan.”