Jordan Chiles Makes Her Position on Losing Olympic Medal Clear

A visibly emotional Jordan Chiles opened up to Forbes on Wednesday about being stripped of her first Olympic medal after the Romanian gymnastics team challenged the decision to revise her final score. Chiles made her feelings clear at Forbes’ Power Women’s Summit, contending that the episode “wasn’t about the medal” but “about my skin color.”

“The biggest thing that was taken from me was the recognition of who I was,” Chiles told the audience. “Not just my sport, but the person I am.”

After taking a moment to gather her thoughts, Chiles continued: “To me, everything that has gone on, it’s not about the medal. It’s about my skin color. It’s about the fact there were things that have led up to this position of being an athlete. And I felt like everything has been stripped.”

In 2018, Chiles was similarly left feeling that she “didn’t have the ability to use my voice or be heard” after an experience with a verbally and emotionally abusive coach which took a “huge toll on my mental health,” the athlete recalled.

“I felt like when I was back in 2018 where I did lose the love of the sport, I lost it again,” Chiles said on Wednesday. “I feel like I was really left in the dark.”

Chiles was initially awarded a bronze medal in August after her coaches challenged her initial score, which placed her fifth. However, the Romanian Gymnastics Federation filed an official challenge of the score with the Court of Arbitration of Sport (CAS), which upheld the challenge and awarded the Bronze medal to Romania’s Ana Bǎrbosu.

“No one was listening to the fact that there are things that we have in place,” Chiles said of the arbitration process. “They wanted it all to be about the Olympics and this and that. It’s a picture. But I make history and I will always continue to make history. It’s something I rightfully did,” she said. “I followed the rules. My coach followed the rules. We did everything that was totally, completely right. So having been left in the dark is something that I feel like they took that all away and were trying to put the name ‘gymnastics’ in front of it.”