September 26, 2024
Attorneys say audio and video footage from a documentary crew proves Coach Landi submitted the inquiry within the one-minute requirement.
Attorneys representing Olympic gymnast Jordan Chiles say the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s (CAS) decision to strip the Team USA athlete of her bronze medal is due to a “critical factual error,” and a documentary crew has video and audio footage to prove it.
The gymnast’s legal team has requested that the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland reopen CAS’ proceedings and examine the footage that was not “previously considered.” In a statement sent to CNN, the documentary crew’s evidence proves Chiles’ coach, Cecile Landi, made the inquiry to correct the athlete’s score in time.
“The evidence in question –- footage from a documentary crew that was recording the women’s gymnastics floor finals -– proves that CAS’s prior decision rested on a critical factual error that was compounded by the fact that CAS allowed Chiles less than a day to prepare for her hearing,” attorneys said. “CAS stripped Chiles’s bronze medal based on its conclusion that Chiles’s coach was four seconds late in making a verbal inquiry to correct Chiles’s score, but the new evidence clearly shows that the inquiry was made on time.”
USA Gymnastics (USAG) has also filed to reopen CAS’ proceedings and revealed the organization also has evidence that Landi filed the inquiry “well within 1 minute required by FIG rules.” USAG said CAS “refused to consider” the video and audio footage as evidence, and the organization is asking that the decision regarding Chiles’ final floor routine score at the 2024 Paris Olympics be made based on truth and accuracy. As previously mentioned by BLACK ENTERPRISE, the 23-year-old American gymnast is hopeful that the people in charge will “do the right thing” to resolve the incident.
In August, she took home the bronze medal in the 2024 Paris Olympics floor final after her coach submitted an inquiry regarding her difficulty score, which boosted her to third place above Romanian gymnast Ana Bǎrbosu. Chiles was asked to return her bronze medal after the Romanian Olympic and Sports Committee requested to review the scoring, which bumped her back to the fifth place spot. USAG and Chiles’ legal team have been fighting for justice since CAS confirmed it wasn’t willing to reconsider the decision.
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