Romanian gymnast Ana Barbosu receives bronze medal after Jordan Chiles stripped of her award
Gymnast Ana Barbosu received her bronze medal in a ceremony in Romania on Friday following a controversial ruling that stripped America’s Jordan Chiles of the medal.
The Romanian Olympic and Sports Committee hosted the ceremony in Bucharest, Romania’s capital, for Barbosu, who received her medal, an Olympic poster and a mascot like other medal recipients in Paris. Romania’s prime minister Marcel Ciolacu presented her with a floral bouquet before Barbosu spoke.
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She said the Olympic spirit is more important than misunderstandings and, “I want to believe that the day will come when all three of us (Barbosu, Chiles and follow Romanian gymnast Sabrina Maneca-Voinea) will receive a bronze medal.”
The controversy stems from the women’s gymnastics floor final inside Paris’ Bercy Arena on Aug. 5. Chiles, the last of the nine gymnasts to perform, received an initial score of 13.666, placing her fifth behind Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade (gold medalist), America’s Simone Biles (silver medalist) and Romania’s Barbosu and Sabrina Maneca-Voinea, who each scored a 13.700. (Barbosu was ahead of Maneca-Voinea for having a higher execution score, meaning the judges thought she hit a cleaner routine.)
Following Chiles’ routine, her coach Cecile Landi submitted an inquiry, which the judges accepted and thus raised Chiles’ score to 13.766, bumping her into the bronze position.
The Romanian Gymnastics Federation filed an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport challenging the timeliness of Chiles’ inquiry, saying it was submitted four seconds after the allotted one-minute mark. (Gymnasts before Chiles had from the time their score appeared on the board to the start of the next gymnast’s routine — typically a few minutes — to file an inquiry.
But with Chiles being the last gymnast to perform, the rule granted USA Gymnastics just one minute to submit an inquiry.)
CAS agreed that Chiles’ inquiry was raised late and her initial score of 13.666 should be reinstated. However, in its full report released last week, CAS also said it would grant Chiles, Barbosu and Maneca-Voinea all bronze medals if it were up to the court, as it said the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) did not track the timing of the inquiry or have any guidelines in place to assure proper protocol was followed.
“If the Panel had been in a position to apply equitable principles, it would surely have attributed a bronze medal to all three gymnasts in view of their performance, good faith and the injustice and pain to which they have been subjected, in circumstances in which the FIG did not provide a mechanism or arrangement to implement the one minute rule,” the court said.
The FIG altered the results to reflect the CAS ruling and gave the IOC the final call on who would be awarded the bronze.
