Although the scandals of the Paris Olympics have come to an end, various cases are likely to continue for a long time. One such case is the battle between Romania and the U.S. for Bronze in the women’s gymnastics floor competition.
The winner will now be decided by legal experts in court.
In the women’s floor routine final, Romania’s Ana Barbosu was originally supposed to finish third, but the Americans contested the result with the judges because they thought their competitor, Jordan Chiles, deserved more points than she received.
The judges allowed the appeal and awarded Chiles a one-tenth higher score, knocking Barbosu off the podium.
But the Romanians did not leave it at that. They also appealed, not to the tournament judges, but first to the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) and then, after the FIG’s refusal, to the international Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
Surprisingly, however, they did not question the legitimacy of the score, but based their argument on the technical fact that the U.S. team had objected after the allowed timeframe to do so had expired.
The court ruled in favor of the Romanian side, and on Saturday the International Gymnastics Federation again changed the final result, with the Romanian athlete again coming third.
But the case is not over yet, as the American side has also appealed to CAS, indicating that they can prove with a video recording that Cécile Landi, the coach of the American team, had already signaled her protest 47 seconds after the score was announced.
The dispute remains ongoing.
