Jordan Chiles gets another bad deal in Olympic gymnastics comedy of errors

We ask much of our Olympic athletes: that they perform with grace and humility, that they embody the Olympic spirit while pursuing their own individual goals, that they abide by the rules and that they accept their fate, whatever it may be, with dignity.

Jordan Chiles was an example of all this during the Olympic Games in Paris.

Is it too much to ask to do the same of the people who hold her Olympic dreams?

What is happening – and has happened – to Chilean and, by extension, Romanian Ana Bărbosu is a parody of transgressive technical misconduct, playing on the emotions of two women who have done nothing wrong.

On Monday afternoon at the Bercy Arena, Chiles completed her floor exercise in the event final, scoring 13.666, just missing out on the 13.700 awarded to Bărbosu and Sabrina Maneca-Voinea and just missing out on the podium. Bărbosu, whose execution score was higher than her teammate’s, was awarded bronze. However, Chiles’ coach Cecile Landi asked the judges to review the difficulty of one of the elements in Chiles’ floor exercise. The request was forwarded to the technical director, who agreed that Chiles had not been given the correct score after review. Her 13.666 was immediately upgraded to 13.766. She was the bronze medalist, not Bărbosu.

As Chiles sobbed with joy and Simone Biles hugged her in a bear hug, Bărbosu cried in pain, devastated by the assessment that relegated her to the dreaded fourth position. It was the Olympic experience at its greatest, in all its pain and glory.

Now, it appears the U.S. failed to make the buzzer, according to a ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport announced Saturday. By rule, inquiries must be filed within one minute of the end of a routine. Landi asked too late — four seconds too late, according to a USA Gymnastics source. And rightly so — even in a subjective sport like gymnastics, a deadline is a deadline.

But the road to that result is a series of mistakes, none of which the gymnasts involved made, and yet they are the only ones who suffer from it.

Consider the insanity: Chiles’ difficulty was scored incorrectly and corrected simply because a coach advised the judges to take another look, but that error in judgment has since been ignored because the Romanians realized that someone else had taken their eye off the clock and allowed an investigation to proceed when they shouldn’t have. The result: Chiles is back on 13.666 (even though her difficulty should have been 13.766 in the first place), and the Court of Arbitration for Sport has thrown the whole thing out and asked FIG, the international gymnastics federation, to sort out who gets the bronze. The Romanians asked that all three gymnasts share the bronze, which seems fair but at best requires an asterisk next to their names.

It took five days to sort it all out. Five glorious days for Chiles, who had already endured the rollercoaster of gymnastics rule nonsense. On the first day of competition, during the qualifying round, Chiles finished fourth overall. The top 24 women’s quality—except Chiles, who was fourth overall—were third on the U.S. team, and Olympic gymnastics apparently treats itself more like Sunday afternoon soccer for 4-year-olds, where anyone can compete. Each team is only allowed to send two women to the finals, which meant that Chiles’ teammate, Sunisa Lee, who beat Chiles by .067, got the tiebreaker and Chiles did not.

Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles celebrate after Chiles’ floor exercise difficulty was changed, making her the bronze medalist. Now, that’s all up in the air. (Naomi Baker/Getty Images)

A devastated Chiles licked her wounds for two days, but in a real-time show of Olympic spirit, returned two days later to help the U.S. capture a team gold. She later showed up to cheer on Lee and Simone Biles in the all-around, while focusing her own energy on the event finals, seeking her first personal medal.

Chiles came out of the floor final dead last and will be the first to admit that she could have done her routine cleaner. She was packing up when Landi popped the question, and when the announcer showed her new score, she finally got her moment. But Chiles chose to celebrate her peers, not herself. From her side of the stage, Chiles caught Biles’ gaze as he hatched a plan, and when Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade stepped onto the podium to claim her gold medal, Chiles and Biles bowed.

It was an extraordinary act of grace, conceived by a woman who had shown nothing but grace all week. For five glorious days, Chiles felt the beautiful weight of an Olympic medal around her neck and did the quintessentially American version of a victory lap, visiting Disneyland Paris and making the morning show circuit. She was, as she called herself, That Girl.

That Girl just announced she’s taking a break from social media to focus on her mental health. The people in charge seem to have finally done what nothing else could: extinguish Jordan Chiles’ Olympic spirit. Her latest post: a series of broken-heart emojis.

(Top photo of Jordan Chiles after the floor exercise at the Paris Olympics: Jamie Squire/Getty Images)