Simone Biles May Have Inadvertently Saved Jordan Chiles’ Olympic Appeal

The 2024 Paris Olympics may be over, but Jordan Chiles’ battle for the bronze medal in floor exercise is not. The Team USA gymnast is appealing a Aug. 10 date ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport that bumped her from third place to fifth, five days after the medal ceremony. Thanks to her friend and teammate Simone Biles, there’s new evidence on her side.

Chiles’ legal team filed her appeal to the Swiss Federal Tribunal on Sept. 17, arguing the CAS case was mishandled, per USA Today. It centers on the controversial floor exercise final, in which Chiles won her first-ever individual Olympic medal. She initially received a score of 13.666 during the event, putting her in fifth place before her coach, Cecile Landi, submitted an inquiry to challenge her difficulty score. The review bumped her score up by 0.1 to 13.766 and pushed her above Romanian gymnasts Ana Barbosu and Sabrina Voinea, who had each scored 13.700.

Within a day, the Romanian Olympic Committee appealed to CAS, arguing that Voinea’s score was incorrectly assessed and that Landi’s inquiry for Chiles wasn’t made within the one-minute deadline. The Voinea appeal was rejected, but the other moved forward. CAS ultimately concluded that Landi’s appeal was submitted four seconds too late and Chiles’ original score and placement should be restored.

That’s where Biles and her Netflix documentary come in. Simone Biles: Rising director Katie Walsh and her team were following the iconic gymnast during the Olympics, and Landi realized they might have more definitive video and audio than what was available from NBC and the Olympic Broadcasting Services, per court documents. They had been granted permission to film in Bercy Arena, so they captured footage with three cameras, plus had a microphone on Landi.

Sure enough, the filmmakers did indeed catch Landi verbally requesting the inquiry. She first did so 49 seconds after Chiles’ score came in, and then she could even be heard repeating, “Inquiry for Jordan,” to an official before the minute was up.

USA Gymnastics previously tried to submit the video footage to CAS the day after its Aug. 10 ruling, but CAS said it couldn’t accept it after its decision had been issued. When it came time for Chiles’ lawyers to submit the appeal to the Swiss Federal Tribunal, they revealed the footage came from the Simone Biles: Rising filmmakers. They also pointed to two other issues beyond the timing dispute: ties between the president of the CAS panel, Hamid G. Gharavi, and the Romanian government, and CAS using the wrong email addresses to communicate with USA Gymnastics and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee about the case.

A Heartbreaking Situation

The ongoing fight has been an emotional roller coaster for all the gymnasts involved. Barbosu originally thought the bronze was hers and began celebrating with the other podium finishers before Chiles’ inquiry was accepted. Cameras caught the devastating moment when she realized she’d fallen out of third place.

Later, Barbosu showed empathy to her competitors after finding out she’d be awarded the medal after all, addressing both Chiles and Voinea in her Instagram stories on Aug. 11. “I know what you are feeling, because I’ve been through the same,” she wrote in part (via E!). “But I know you’ll come back stronger. I hope from deep [in] my heart that at the next Olympics, all three of us will share [the] same podium. This is my true dream!”

Chiles, meanwhile, waited to share her thoughts on Instagram following the ruling but eventually expressed her sadness. “I have no words,” she wrote in part on Aug. 15. “This decision feels unjust and comes as a significant blow, not just to me but to everyone who has championed my journey.”

Biles has continued to be among Chiles’ champions. After Chiles’ attorneys filed her appeal on Sept. 16, Biles tweeted about the footage, writing in part, “JUSTICE FOR JORDAN.”

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