Jordan Chiles, a U.S. gymnast who initially won the bronze medal in the Paris Olympics before the judges re-sorted the scores and winners, says that the stripping of her medal was an insult to who she is as a person. She is also, predictably, claiming that racism was behind the incident.
Speaking at the Forbes Power Women’s Summit held on September 11, Chiles said the “recognition of who I was” was taken away from her along with her medal. She claims that her complaint is not about the medal itself, but “about my skin color.” Chiles said she felt as though “everything has been stripped” from her.
What’s the whole thing about? Chiles initially won the bronze medal for the gymnastics floor exercises at the Paris games. This came about through an appeal she lodged with the judges who had first ranked her in fifth place. The appeal was successful at the time, and it moved Chiles into third place, giving her the bronze medal.
But then things took a turn. The Romanian Olympic Committee complained that Chiles’ appeal had been submitted four seconds past the one-minute time-limit for appeals. The Court of Arbitration for Sport agreed, and made Chiles appeal moot. This put her back in fifth place, and took the bronze medal away. Meanwhile the Romanian competitor, Ana Barbasou, was then given the bronze medal.
Barbasou is white, and Chiles is black, so Chiles believes this re-sorting was motivated by racism. It is not clear why she believes this. Chiles simply asserts that racism must be behind the decision, but does not explain how she knows this, or how she knows the decision was not made based on the rules of the game.
USA Gymnastics disagrees with the decision and said that it submitted evidence that Chiles had filed her appeal within the time limit. The Court of Arbitration did not agree and dismissed the appeal.
Chiles said that she and her coach followed all the rules and performed correctly, and now she believes she is being punished for doing the right thing.
American-style racial politics affected the entire affair. The media became ecstatic at the medal-awarding ceremony where Chiles joined two other black medalists, gymnast Simone Biles and Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade, on the podium. They made much of the fact that that was the first time three black women had been gathered to receive medals for gymnastic floor exercises.
Whether this attention to race and skin color and “the first time” translated to anyone outside America, which is peculiarly obsessed with race, is not clear.
