Jordan Chiles says Olympic gymnastics controversy took away ‘the recognition of who I was’

For 14 seconds, Jordan Chiles paused and looked down to collect her thoughts and emotions.

The question — about what Chiles felt she lost when the International Olympic Committee stripped her of her bronze medal in the Olympic women’s gymnastics floor exercise — forced her to stop mid-answer. The audience at the Forbes Power Women’s Summit in New York applauded her as she regrouped and held the microphone back up to her mouth.

Holding back tears, Chiles said she lost more than a bronze medal through the controversy that dominated the end of last month’s Paris Games. The controversy “wasn’t about the medal,” she said, but other realities that made her feel “stripped.”

“The biggest thing that was taken from me was the recognition of who I was, not just my sport, but the person I am,” Chiles said.

“It’s about my skin color,” Chiles added. “It’s about the fact there were things that have led up to this position of being an athlete.”

The on-stage interview Wednesday — which occurred before Chiles appeared at MTV’s Video Music Awards at night — marked the gymnast’s most extensive comments since the IOC said it would reallocate Chiles’ bronze to Romania’s Ana Bărbosu following an appeal by the Romanian Gymnastics Federation.

At the floor final on Aug. 5, Chiles originally finished fifth but rose to third after her coach, Cecile Landi, submitted a successful inquiry to raise her score by one-tenth of a point. Five days later, the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled that Landi’s inquiry should be invalidated because it came four seconds after the one-minute window for such an appeal. After the ruling, the International Gymnastics Federation dropped Chiles to fifth, and the IOC reallocated the medal. USA Gymnastics has said it is appealing the CAS decision to the Swiss Federal Tribunal.

Chiles said she felt “left in the dark” and unsupported during the controversy. She felt her voice wasn’t heard during the appeal process and compared her emotions to 2018, when she said an emotionally and verbally abusive coach caused her to lose her love for gymnastics.

“No one was listening to the fact that there are things that we have in place,” Chiles said. “There are things that we have that should’ve been seen but weren’t taken for realization.”

USA Gymnastics has argued that it has video evidence showing Landi made the appeal 47 seconds after Chiles’ score was posted, 13 seconds before the inquiry window closed, and that it did not have enough time to properly make its case to CAS.

Chiles previously referred to the decision as “unjust.”

“(It) comes as a significant blow, not just to me, but to everyone who has championed my journey,” Chiles said in a post on X on Aug. 15. “To add to the heartbreak, the unprompted racially driven attacks on social media are wrong and extremely hurtful.”

Almost a month later, Chiles maintains that she and her coach followed the rules and did “everything that was totally and completely right” in the floor exercise competition.

“I made history and I will always continue to make history,” said Chiles, who won gold in the Olympic women’s team competition.

Chiles, who will return to UCLA for the upcoming college gymnastics season, received a bronze clock at the VMAs as a gift from Flavor Flav, who promised to make her one after her medal was stripped.

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(Photo: Steven Ferdman / Getty Images)