Gymnast Jordan Chiles has appealed to the Swiss Supreme Court for his Olympic bronze medal

Jordan Chiles, the American gymnast whose Olympic bronze medal was stripped by an arbitration court days after the floor exercise final in Paris, has appealed her case to Switzerland's highest federal court.

It was one of the most dramatic turns of events at the Summer Olympics: a viral and historic medal ceremony — the first time three black women stood on the same medal podium in an Olympic gymnastics event — days later when an arbitration court ruled a last-minute probe that boosted Chiles' score to third place. It was filed a few seconds late.

Even as USA Gymnastics officials said they could provide video evidence that “definitely” showed the investigation was filed on time, the Court of Arbitration for Sport refused to revisit the case. Olympic officials announced that they would “reassign” the bronze medal to Romania's Ana Barbosu, who was awarded the medal at a ceremony in Bucharest last month.

Now, Chiles has asked the Swiss Federal Supreme Court to order CAS to re-evaluate the case.

“Jordan Chiles' appeal presents the international community with a simple legal question—will everyone stand by when an Olympic athlete who did only the right thing is stripped of his medal due to fundamental unfairness in an ad-hoc arbitration process? The answer should be no.” ,” Maurice M. Suh, legal counsel for Chiles, said in a statement. “Every part of the Olympics, including the arbitration process, should stand for fair play.”

The appeal asks CAS to vacate the ruling and retrial the case. A retrial, his law firm said, would allow Chiles to prepare a defense and present evidence, “including video footage showing that his coach's scoring investigation was timely submitted.”

Jordan Chiles competes in the gymnastics women's floor exercise final during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games on August 5, 2024.

Lionel Bonaventure/AFP via Getty Images

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Lionel Bonaventure/AFP via Getty Images

When her scores were first posted in the August 5 competition, Chiles finished in fifth place with a score of 13.666, just shy of Barbosur, who scored 13.7. But Chiles' coach believes the judges scored him wrongly and filed an investigation shortly after. The judges agreed, adjusting Chiles' score by a tenth of a point to 13.766.

In the following days, the Romanian Gymnastics Federation appealed to the Court of Independent Arbitration. The CAS panel determined that the probe was filed four seconds late and Chiles' score was corrected to 13.666. Gymnastics rules require the final gymnast of a competition to file an inquiry within one minute.

Chiles was heartbroken, the gymnast said. He has been subjected to racist online abuse since the dispute. The ordeal left him feeling like more than a bronze medal had been taken from him, he said At the Forbes Summit last week. “I followed the rules. My coach followed the rules. We did everything completely, completely right,” he said. “I think they took all of this away.”

In its application to the Swiss court, Chiles also said CAS would remove arbitrator Hamid Gharavi from any future hearings. Arbitrator Gharavi, who presided over the hearings in Chile, is currently providing legal advice to Romania in other international proceedings. The New York Times reported last month. (The court told the Times that Gharavi disclosed the work and that neither party objected to his participation in the presiding.)

“From start to finish, the procedures leading to the CAS panel's decision were fundamentally unfair and it is no surprise that they resulted in an unfair decision,” law firm Gibson Dunn, which is representing Chiles on appeal, said in a statement. .