USA gymnast Jordan Chiles stripped of Olympic bronze medal as she's bumped from podium
11 August 2024, 11:11 | Updated: 11 August 2024, 11:23
Team USA's star gymnast Jordan Chiles has been asked to return her Olympic bronze medal won during the Paris 2024 floor finals.
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The painful ruling came after the Court of Arbitration for Sport voided an inquiry that boosted the US gymnast from fifth place to third.
It means that Romanian gymnast Ana Barbosu will now receive the Olympic bronze with a score of 13.700, topping Chiles' original score of 13.666.
The IOC said in a statement: “We are in touch with the [National Olympic Committee] of Romania to discuss the reallocation ceremony and with [U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee] regarding the return of the bronze medal”.
It was ruled on Saturday that the appeal by US coach Cecile Landi to have 0.1 added to the athlete’s score came outside the allocated one-minute window.
The rules, put in place by the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG), mean that the appeal came four seconds too late.
Charles, the last athlete to perform on the floor, will now have her initial finishing place of fifth restored.
Since winning her third Olympic medal — the athlete's first individual medal of the Olympics — on Monday, Chiles kicked off a tour around the US.
Visiting the NASDAQ stock exchange and the Today Show as part of her United States press tour, the athlete also showed off her medals at UCLA.
But now, the athlete will be forced to return the medal to the IOC, leaving her with the team gold following the all-round gymnastics events.
It comes as Algerian boxer, Imane Khelif, filed a legal complaint in Paris over online harassment hours after controversially winning Olympic gold.
The boxer found herself at the centre of a gender row after her first round opponent, Italian Angela Carini, abandoned the fight after just 46 seconds, saying she feared for her life over the Algerian's strength.
The Paris games also marked the return of North Korea, who are competing in the Summer Olympics for the first time in eight years.
The communist state was deemed to have withdrawn unlawfully from the Tokyo 2020 Games citing pandemic concerns, a move which saw them suspended by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
