Chiles appeals decision in Switzerland

by | Sep 18, 2024

CHILES: Out to regain her bronze medal. REUTERS PHOTO

 

 

US gymnast Jordan Chiles on Monday (Tuesday in Manila) filed an appeal in the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland to overturn a decision that stripped her of her Olympic bronze medal in the women’s floor event at the Paris Games.

Chiles was forced to give up the medal when the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) last month ruled in favor of an appeal by Romanian gymnast Ana Maria Barbosu, who was subsequently awarded the bronze.

Barbosu and her team had appealed to CAS that an inquiry filed by the US team over the results of the floor exercise, which led to Chiles’s initial score being revised upwards, had been registered four seconds after the one-minute deadline allowed by the International Gymnastics Federation.

The success of the Romanian appeal meant Chiles’s score was reduced and she fell out of third place behind Brazilian winner Rebeca Andrade and silver medalist Simone Biles, her American teammate.

In the appeal, lawyers for Chiles argue that CAS refused to consider video footage that “unequivocally proves” that the inquiry was submitted in time.

They also argue that Hamid Gharavi, the president of the CAS panel that revoked Chiles’s bronze medal, had a 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,” attorneys for Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLC said in a press release.

The lawyers also said that Chiles was only notified of the CAS hearing a few hours before it began, not giving her the necessary time to prepare a defense.

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