The Jordan Chiles case is far from over.
On Monday, September 16, attorneys representing Chiles filed an appeal with the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland to overturn a decision by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) that stripped Chiles of her bronze medal for the women’s gymnastics floor event in the Paris 2024 Olympics. The news was announced by Chiles’ counsel in a press release.
“Today’s appeal is a continuation of Chiles’s pursuit of justice for the bronze medal. Chiles asks the Supreme Court to find that the CAS decision was procedurally deficient for two reasons,” the press release reads, and then it goes on to explain the reasons.
According to Chiles’ counsel, “CAS violated Chiles’s fundamental ‘right to be heard’ by refusing to consider the video evidence that showed her inquiry was submitted on time — in direct contradiction to the findings in CAS’s decision,”
Furthermore, they claim the gymnast was never informed that CAS president Hamid G. Gharavi had “a serious conflict of interest,” due to the fact he’d acted as counsel for Romania for almost a decade and was still representing the country in other matters at the time of the hearing.
Chiles, who originally won the bronze medal during the floor exercise at Paris 2024, had her medal stripped by the FIG (International Gymnastics Federation) and the IOC (International Olympic Committee) after a ruling by the CAS (Court of Arbitration for Sport) determined her coach had submitted an inquiry into her score too late and therefore, the inquiry was not valid. Footage submitted by Chiles’ team, however, some of which comes from the Netflix documentary team following Simone Biles, her teammate at the 2024 Paris Olympics, shows the inquiry was submitted on time.
USA Gymnastics also released a statement in support of Chiles:
“USA Gymnastics supports the appeal submitted today by Jordan Chiles at the Swiss Federal Tribunal as we made a collective, strategic decision to have Jordan lead the initial filing,” the statement read. “USAG is closely coordinating with Jordan and her legal team and will make supportive filings with the court in the continued pursuit of justice for Jordan.”
Chiles shared a statement on Instagram on August 15, saying about the CAS decision: “I have no words. This decision feels unjust and comes as a significant blow, not just to me, but to everyone who has championed my journey,”