The Olympics are over but we still don’t know who win bronze in women’s floor exercise!
Monday, August twelve, Olympic Games are officially over because we still don't know who won bronze in women's floor exercise.
It's crazy.
It was exactly seven days ago that that floor exercise happened. And the drama continues and tm USA is fighting back, not quite ready to FedEx Jordan Chiles bronze medal back to the IOC and says it has submitted video evidence that irrefutably shows that the bronze belongs to Chiles.
Welcome everybody to this episode of Amy and TJ as we continue our Olympics coverage, and this has become the story. There have been a couple of stories the boxers, the gender controversy, I think is one of the lasting stories Robes. But now this story the Olympics is over, and this story continues and doesn't necessarily look like it's going to end anytime soon.
Yeah, I mean, it's remarkable and honestly it's I feel like it's shameful at this point because this is not in the spirit of the Olympics. But I love the TMUSA is fighting back Gymnastics TMUSA Gymnastics calling bs on the court decision that said Jordan Chiles did not win her bronze medal, and they say they have the evidence to back it up.
It seems weird to get you caught up because a lot of you all and everybody seems to be following. But the quick, very quick recap. Jordan Chiles placed fifth in the floor exercise. She made an inquiry into her score. The score was adjusted up, put her in thirst. She got the bronze. Romania protested. A court ruled over the weekend that Jordan did not win that bronze medal because that inquiry came four seconds after the one minute deadline. Get it, got it good? You should all be caught up now. But again, a lot of you all have been following it, that's right.
And so the court that made that ruling said, hey, we're not going to get involved in the medals. That is the International Olympic Committee's decision. And so the IOC made a decision Sunday saying that Jordan Chiles needs to return her bronze medal and that it would be reallocated to the Romanian gymnast who is now officially the third place winner. But late yesterday USA Gymnastics released a statement saying that it had quote formally submitted a letter and video evidence to the Court of Arbitration for Sport conclusively establishing that head coach the cil Landy's request to file an inquiry was submitted forty seven seconds after publishing the score, well within the one minute deadline required by the rule, and in fact they say that she made another inquiry fifty five seconds, so there were two moments where they asked for the judges to look at the score, specifically her degree of difficulty score, well within the one minute.
Again, folks, we're saying they have I don't know how you refute time stamped video evidence, but they're saying not just one, but two. So they have an inquiry and a backup inquiry. They say both took place before that one minute deadline. They say they did not have this video evidence before the court ruling. They would have submitted it, but they didn't have it. But they also would not at this point go into further detail about the video where it came from, citing confidentiality. So that is where we are. I don't know what the rule is necessarily for. I guess you can always appeal and fight back if the court made a ruling already about the one minute and four seconds. Where was their evidence? They didn't just take Romania's word for it, I'm sure so they had. There has to be something else out there that the court based their ruling on.
Yeah, and that's so interesting because we were asking that question yesterday. Where did this minute and four seconds come from? Who was supposed to be timing it? There were omega clocks everywhere, yet nowhere did I see a countdown or have I ever even heard of a countdown after the last gymnasts routine, because typically you don't even really need a countdown clock if it was any other gymnast in any other part of this rotation.
Basically, you have the time.
A coach or a gymnast or an athlete has the time from when the score is posted until the next gymnast starts their routine. But when you're the last gymnast, as Childs was to perform, you have exactly one minute.
So this would be a non issue. If she went second, third, fourth, fifth, or sixth in the rotation, there is no clock. If the next person would have started, your time is up, essentially, so what do you do? We have a seventeen second difference. Now, what are we going to do to make up the difference between forty seven seconds that the US said that they took to submit an inquiry and a minute and four seconds. It feels like a we've all been in negotiation before. I want to give you one thousand dollars, you want two thousand dollars, and we agree on fifteen hundred. I don't know how you do this. If we're at a minute four, you're at forty seven. How do you reconcile that seven a team minute difference? I cannot wait to see this video that they say as time stamped and proves it. So if that is now submitted, is that now better evidence? Is that going to be seen as more definitive proof? And now Jordan should get and then was Romaana, you're gonna come back and say something else? Is not an end insight to it? Right now?
Yeah?
I mean, look, if they can unequivocally, which they say, they can, prove that those inquiries plural came well before the minute was up, here's the deal. The judges said the inquiry was correct. They acknowledged that they made a mistake when calculating child's difficulty score.
So if it's.
Proven that the inquiry happened within that minute. It's it's it's irrefutable that Jordan's score a Jordan Child's score should be thirteen point seven to sixty six, which clearly puts her in third place.
My issue is that you can't have both can't be true. You cannot have a proof that they submitted it in forty seven seconds and the court made a ruling based on proof that had happened in a minute four seconds. You can't prove those two things cannot be true. Something's got to cancel out. So I can imagine that the court really not have They've got to have something. Don't think Romania has to have some.
You would think that they would have to it.
Couldn't just take Romania's word for it. They have some. They got an answer for this, and you know it's not some doctored footage from the US. It's time stamp. I can't wait to see this.
Yeah.
And also, you know, just a little deep dive I was trying to do on how they do time it what typically happens, and from what I've read, the judge or the person who accepts the inquiry is the one who was supposed to be timing it, so they accept it. At the end of the day, the judge who was responsible for timing this or making sure it fell within a certain time period, that minute time period, clearly accepted the inquiry and then rule right there in the gymnasium.
We read that the decision by the court. I don't remember them mentioning anything about h I don't think them they mentioned why the minute for how they know it was a minute four?
They didn't.
They didn't say based on something submitted, based on this or that, I don't know, and not even testimony from the judge who took the inquiry. I have no idea where they got the minute four from it.
I know, And we wondered that yesterday and here we go now with apparently proof that that is not that is not in fact the case. And look, you know, just in terms of saying the headline that Chiles had to return her bronze medal and it was going to be reallocated to the Romanian gymnast I just.
Think that that is.
That is just so not in the spirit of the Olympics. If Jordan Chiles had been accused of doping or cheating, that would be to me, the only acceptable reason for removing a medal from an athlete who did nothing wrong. She did her routine, and then her coaches challenged the judges who admitted they didn't give her the correct difficulty score.
To me, that's the end of story.
The story is the timing. I have no idea, I really don't, But the story is the timing. If it came in after fine, that sucks. Give the other young lady a bronze medal and let's all move on. I don't know why. It's not that simple, but it's just simple time issue. Is it a minute or not?
What do you think about giving them both the bronze sweet That is the op This would be done exactly.
She could have done this days ago, exactly. We could go and I'm pretty sure Jordan would have been happy and the other young lady would have been happy, and everything would have been fine.
Yeah, And the Roumanians asked for that. They asked for a shared bronze medal. They didn't ask for the bronze medal to be taken from Chiles and be given to their athlete or athletes.
They specifically asked.
For that, And so I just I'm curious why that wasn't even considered an option in this case. It seems like that would be the thing that made the most sense. And the sad thing is, because of all this back and forth, you know, people tend to take sides and unfortunately have gotten incredibly cruel about it.
So not I mean, we've talked about.
How Jordan has been dealing with a lot of hateful comments online, racist comments online, according to her mother, so much so that she's removed herself from being in social media, which is incredibly sad. But I also was reading that Anna Barbosu, who is the Romanian gymnast, she actually wrote something on Instagram which I thought was important to share. She said, Sabrina, that was the other Romanian gymnast who tied with her Jordan. My thoughts are with you. I know what you were feeling because I've been through the same, but I know you'll come back stronger. And then she says, I hope from deep in my heart that at the next Olympics all three of us will share the same podium. This is my dream. So the athletes aren't fighting among themselves, and they're in the spirit of trying to do and be fair about all of this and still support one another. I don't understand why the rest of the world can't do the same.
And to her credit, she did point some fingers back at the judges. The I on't say yes, I say adults, if you will, Some of these gymnastar young girls, but there are women here. But she said the situation would not have existed if the persons in charge had respected the regulation. Athletes are not to be blamed and the hate directed to us is painful. I wanted to end this edition of the Olympic Games Paris twenty twenty four and the spirit of Olympism, as she put it, the true value of the world. So now you actually have the athletes who are coming out and trying to calm a situation that the adults seem to be continuing to exacerbate with the back and forth. I look. I looked and looked, and spent a lot of time this morning trying to find something comparable to this. But when someone's asked it for metal back or stripped from a medal. In Olympic history, it's all been about doping or cheating in some way, circumventing the rules in some way. There's guys in the past who competed under not their real name, so they had their medals taken. There was somebody who on the equestrian team that they promoted to a lieutenant so he could be a gentleman and right things like that. Other than that, it's doping.
Yeah.
I mean.
The only thing, the only incident that I've heard anybody compare this to, is back in twenty twelve with Paul Ham, the US gymnasts who had won gold, and then the South Korean gymnast who found out or pretty much immediately announced they had gotten it wrong. It was a whole start value issue, kind of similar to what we're looking at with Jordan Childs. The difference in South Korea did not put in an inquiry at the time and only did it later. But still they asked for Paul Ham to return his gold medal, and it took several months of arbitration, but Paul Ham was allowed to keep his gold medal and they did not change the scores. But it was a cut and dry case in this sense that South Korea did not put in an inquiry anywhere near the amount of time, so it wasn't even an issue. This is the issue is the time. As we point out, and you know what, we have started to hear sports analysts athletes really point to the problem of what happened. If the judges at that event had done what they were supposed to do, they wouldn't have missed the degree of difficulty in Chiles's it was a split leap, and if that had happened, none of this would be happening. That is where it all went wrong.
I give, I know it's the biggest stage in the eyes are on it. But if you go back and look at all how many competed in the floor exercise.
Eight to take eight Yeah, in the finals.
If you go through every routine, I bet they missed something in every routine.
That's that's fair.
I mean judges, and I'm gonna used to referees doing this. Referees miss calls, they just do. It's human. You've got a human being involved in something. Mistakes are possible. Some of that is kind of built in a ref's miss called oh you missed the file in the second quarter. Oh in the fourth quarter, you missed that, uh missed whatever? It just it happened. So it happened here. But it's a perfect storm that has been created now to where I don't know which just an adult would step up and deal with this and the kids, I say the kids, but the young women are the ones who are stepping up, who are trying to call in the situation. I just it just is I don't understand why she can't keep the metal.
Yeah, yeah, I mean I was reading the final line. The Sports Illustrated has a great article out and they basically ended with saying that both gymnasts should get the bronze, and the people who were entrusted with running this competition are the ones who screwed up. And their point is the least they can do now is not make it worse. And how you don't make it worse is by giving both of those young women bronze medals.
Yeah. I don't know what rule they have out there that prevents this. They haven't presented anything that says we can't do this. It just isn't out there. And this metal reallocation, I don't know if the oh yeah, at this point they're saying the metal reallocation. They've contacted both the Olympic committees, Romania and the US trying to figure out how to reallocate the medals, and this is something they've done where you get the option now to have a ceremony somewhere or come back and do it at the next Olympics. And they actually had reallocation ceremonies this year that you missed. It was on Friday. But a lot of athletes from ten twenty plus years ago who finished with bronze or silver or not a metal at all, and then some doping something comes up, somebody loses the medal, they get elevated and moved up, and then they get their meddle ten twelve plus years later. But all of those situations, that's all I had to do with doping.
Yes, I was looking at that too. They're all involving doping and this is I feels unprecedented and it's not over, and you know, we can only hope that they do the right thing. And I just I also hope that just everyone out there can calm down and stop pointing fingers at the athletes. I think that's the biggest that's the saddest part of this, that these athletes world class, the best of the best, who gave their heart and soul and put it all on the line. Are now dealing with hateful you know, vitriol which people might not think, Oh, just turn off for social media, and who cares?
It affects people?
Words matter, what people say has a huge impact. We know how that feels. You can try to rise above it. But they did nothing wrong and are so undeserving of this and are deserving of national pride and international recogn for what they've done. And I'm proud of how all of these girls have handled this.
I didn't do a deep dive on the social media stuff. You know, I'm not on that lately, but I didn't. I have no idea watching what happened on TV with the floor exercise, why anybody could walk away being mad at either athlete. Neither one did a single thing.
And they had genuine reactions, but there.
Was nothing what critics, I don't when you talked about it, and I know it's been out there. Who's mad at George Giles? How can you be mad at George Giles? Or is it an America thing? Is it more so look at the Americans again? Kind of a thing? I think I haven't really.
I think what it was was that horrific juxtaposition that was no fault of either gymnast where you had Anna the Romanian gymnast sobbing at the moment she realized after she had her flag draped around her that she wasn't going to get a bronze medal, and Jordan realizing she was going to get it, and her elation, and both of those are authentic, does deserving reactions to a very shocking change of events. So neither one of those women did anything wrong in their genuine reactions to the news and so, but people take offense to it and for whatever reason, And you can't explain or understand why people want to blame. I think there's just this need to have a bad guy and a good guy. Everyone wants the black and white, and it's just not the case in this situation at all.
And you pointed this.
Out one of the most incredible moments. I think some people would say it was the most iconic moment of the Games, when Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles A bowed to andrage Brazil's amazing Rebecca Andrage who did that incredible floor routine that would never have happened, you know, I mean, just we're.
Being told right now it didn't at this moment. We're told that moment did not happen. That historic moment of three black gymnasts for the first time being on the podium, all three black, never happened before. And we're told, actually, it did not happen des by what I saw, because Jordan Jiles didn't win bronze, is what we're being told currently until the court rules again, I don't know how that this is supposed to go.
Yeah, I mean, we'll keep following it. I know everybody else is. And unfortunately, you know, this has been an incredible Olympics. I think NBC did, and we both have said this an incredible job. The access we had to events we had never been able to see before. I've never watched so much Olympic sports in my life, even having been to most of the most recent Olympics. So this was such a pleasure and a joy. But this is the shadow. This is unfortunately really taking away what was otherwise a remarkable Olympics.
And why this matters. I know where the story of the Olympics is. Folks fighting over a bronze medal. Right, it seems not even a gold medal, but it's bronze. But it's important. Why it's important. I mean, this is the first, it could be the first medal in gymnastics for Romania in twenty years. This is a proud power house historically in gymnastics. But the Eric Kinnard, who is an American high jumper, a long jumper, I think he is a high high jumper, high jumper. He got a medal yesterday, excuse me, on Friday, got a gold medal. It was an upgrade from the silver medal he got in twenty twelve. So we're talking twelve years ago. This dude got a silver at the Olympics in London. What turns out the person who finished with gold ends up getting it stripped because of doping, because of drug testing. So he gets his gold medal now, and he made the point that he probably lost out on millions of dollars silver to gold. Silver's great and people are proud, but there's nothing like walking back into your country with a gold medal around your neck. And so when you think about the young lady from Romania, it's more than just I got third or I want a medal. This is a matter of national pride and it's a matter of her livelihood possibly moving forward. So That's why it matters to get this right and get to get it right in the moment, because lives can be changed by what the IOC does and doesn't do.
Oh, I mean, the difference between medaling and not is huge. From sponsorships, you know, forget the wheaties box. But just this is how these athletes make a living. They put their heart and soul, this is their work, this is their job, and it's not easy for them necessarily to always get paid. But if you're a medalist, that's a life changing experience financially where it allows you to keep doing your sport and encourages other people. It encourages a whole entire country, the young folks seeing someone who looks like them do something that incredible. It has a massive riple effect, to your point, a massiveble effect, not just for the athlete, for an entire nation.
So we shall see this. This isn't the Olympics over, but this ain't We still got a medal to be awarded. Apparently, but as it's still a fish, at least sits Jordan Giles did not medal at these Olympics. However, there is I guess now robes a court battle over Bronze medal
And we will be following it and we will bring you all the details, so thank you for listening as always, and we do have our final Tea from Perry episode coming up, so look for it