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Stripping Jordan Chiles of Olympic bronze medal shows IOC’s cruelty toward athletes, again

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Stripping Jordan Chiles of Olympic bronze medal shows IOC’s cruelty toward athletes, again

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PARIS — If the International Olympic Committee wants Jordan Chiles’ Olympic bronze medal back so badly, it can send its president Thomas Bach to get it himself.

In its quest for “fairness,” the IOC announced Sunday morning that not only was it giving Romania’s Ana Barbosu a bronze medal in the floor exercise, but it also was stripping Chiles of hers. Chiles did nothing wrong. She didn’t dope. She didn’t cheat. She didn’t break any laws. She wasn’t even the one who submitted an appeal that we know now was done four seconds too late.

None of that matters. She’s losing her bronze medal because of a procedural error. The supposed adults in charge screwed up, but it’s Chiles who is paying the price.

What’s worse, these folks who should be held responsible have spent the last six days swanning around while Chiles has been left to twist in the wind. She’s been subjected to the most vile and vicious attacks on social media, much of it racist trash.

Chiles is as much a victim in this wretchedly avoidable scenario as Barbosu. But these “fans” have made it open season on her, and the IOC and International Gymnastics Federation don’t give a damn.

“Throughout the appeal process, Jordan has been subject to consistent, utterly baseless and extremely hurtful attacks on social media. No athlete should be subject to such treatment,” the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and USA Gymnastics said in a joint statement Saturday, after a ruling that didn’t just fly in the face of fair play, it spit on it.

“We condemn the attacks and those who engage, support or instigate them,” the statement continued. “We commend Jordan for conducting herself with integrity both on and off the competition floor, and we continue to stand by and support her.”

The USOPC said Sunday it will appeal, citing “critical errors” by both the FIG and the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

“Given these circumstances, we are committed to pursuing an appeal to help Jordan Chiles receive the recognition she deserves,” the USOPC said.

Good. Somebody needs to have her back because the IOC and FIG won’t.

Let’s unpack exactly what happened. Chiles was the last competitor in the floor exercise final last Monday. When her score of 13.666 flashed, it put her in fifth place, behind Barbosu and her teammate, Sabrina Maneca-Voinea. (The Romanians had both scored 13.7, but Barbosu won the tiebreak because of a higher execution score.)

Chiles’ coaches thought she’d been underscored, not given credit for a tour jete leap. They doubted it would be successful but, wanting to advocate for their athlete, filed an appeal.

And this is where things went wrong. Because Chiles was the final competitor in the event, coach Cecile Landi had one minute to lodge an appeal. That’s 60 seconds, and not one more. If Landi didn’t submit it in time, it should have been rejected out of hand.

It wasn’t.

Instead, Chiles’ score was reviewed and it was agreed she’d been underscored. Her score was changed to 13.766, which put her ahead of both Romanians and gave her the bronze medal. Barbosu, who’d begun celebrating before the results were official, dropped the Romanian flag she’d been waving and began sobbing.

The Romanians were incensed — not so incensed to immediately go to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, mind you. In a matter in which four seconds were in question, they waited a full day before filing a complaint, which was then amended Thursday.

CAS finally ruled Saturday that Landi had indeed submitted the appeal late. By four seconds. That’s the amount of time it takes to draw a breath.

Yes, rules are rules, and if you give one person four seconds, another person will want 14 and on it goes. But therein lies the problem. It is FIG officials who were in the wrong, not Chiles and not even Landi. It was incumbent upon them to determine whether the appeal was filed in time and, since it wasn’t, to reject it in the moment.

You want to punish someone? Punish them. You want to make an example of someone? Make an example of them. You want to send a message that rules must be followed? Hold the people who didn’t accountable.

But they’re getting off scot-free while Chiles’ entire Olympic experience, what should be the proudest moment of her life, is forever tainted.

That part is also the IOC’s fault.

Olympic medals are reallocated on a regular basis. There was a ceremony Friday to do just that, in fact. But it’s almost always the result of doping. Of an athlete trying to game the system and getting caught. That wasn’t what happened here. The athlete didn’t do anything wrong. The people running the system did.

There was an easy fix to this debacle that would have been acceptable to everyone: Give Barbosu a bronze medal and let Chiles keep hers. It would have been a gesture of magnitude and Olympic spirit — not unlike the one Chiles initiated during the medals ceremony, when she and Simone Biles bowed to Rebeca Andrade as the Brazilian stepped onto the podium to receive her gold medal.

“Why don’t we just give her her flowers? Not only has she given Simone her flowers, but a lot of us in the United States, our flowers as well,” Chiles said at the time. “So giving it back is what makes it so beautiful. So I felt like it was needed.”

The IOC was only too happy to celebrate Chiles then, posting a photo of the moment with the caption, “This is everything.”

Now it has stabbed her in the back. With help from the FIG.

The FIG, perhaps trying to deflect from its stunning incompetence, decreed that the floor results would be “modified” following the CAS decision. The high and mighty IOC then said Chiles had to give back her medal. It didn’t explain its thinking, apologize to Chiles for the emotional trauma all this has caused or take Romanian fans to task for their abuse.

The IOC had the chance to do the right thing. To, for once, be on the side of athletes. But the IOC and all its Olympic movement minions never miss an opportunity to give those athletes the middle finger.

The wrongs done in this case are infuriating. Taking Chiles’ medal away does nothing to make them right.

Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.

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