2024 Olympics face another controversy after American stripped of bronze medal

Initially, Chiles' floor routine did not score high enough to put her on the podium. However, as it turns out, the judges made a mistake when grading the routine as they counted it as being easier than it really was.

Extra points are awarded for more challenging moves, so this is a big deal. The US Women's gymnasts team challenged the result on her behalf, which was accepted as the judges recognized their mistake. However, it has since been revealed that the appeal was filed too late by Olympic rules, so the result was overturned a second time.

According to Chiles' sister, the athlete has already been stripped of her bronze medal. She made a long post about it on her Instagram account, claiming racism as a factor in the decision.

Understandably, fans of the games, especially Americans, are outraged by this decision. After all, if the scores were all correct to begin with, she would have earned the medal. Furthermore, the decision was overturned five whole days after the event, which seems rather extreme, especially considering the fact that there is another option. They could have decided to award both Chiles and the fourth-place finisher a bronze medal, and have them share the title. After all, this is not a foreign concept to the Olympics. In fact, athletes have shared medals many times either through results that were too close to call, or other mistakes made my judges.

What makes matters worse in this case, is that Jordan Chiles outright earned the bronze medal with her score. In the past, athletes have been awarded medals even though they likely did not deserve them. The most famous instance of this was Russian figure skating duo Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze originally taking gold in 2002 despite Canadian duo Jamie Salé and David Pelletier objectively giving a better performance. After a French judge came out and said the Russians pressured her into awarding Gold to the Russian pair, the Olympic committee decided to award gold to both teams. Could they not do that again?

Source: MarkerZone
USA Olympian Jordan Chiles likely to be stripped of medal due to breach of rules