{"id":109288,"date":"2025-02-26T13:49:19","date_gmt":"2025-02-26T21:49:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/02\/26\/the-intersection-of-sports-and-appeals-at-the-2024-olympics\/"},"modified":"2025-02-26T13:49:19","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T21:49:19","slug":"the-intersection-of-sports-and-appeals-at-the-2024-olympics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/02\/26\/the-intersection-of-sports-and-appeals-at-the-2024-olympics\/","title":{"rendered":"The Intersection of Sports and Appeals at the 2024 Olympics"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland is now considering an appeal to decide the fate of the bronze medal awarded to American gymnast Jordan Chiles at the 2024 Paris Olympics. The bronze was initially awarded to Chiles, then taken away as a result of a decision by The Court of Arbitration for Sport in a rules dispute and awarded to competitor Romanian Ana B\u0103rbosu.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is so fascinating to me the intersection of sports and appeals,\u201d said NC Court of Appeals Judge Allegra Collins. \u201cIt\u2019s essentially everything that interests me all in one place. The confluence of these circumstances, plus the intense media coverage of the bronze medal controversy this past summer, triggered my interest in following the case closely.\u201d<\/p>\n

Collins held members of the Wake County Bar Association spellbound as she explained the case at its January luncheon.<\/p>\n

Calculation Inquiry<\/h2>\n

Jordan Chiles competed in the women\u2019s floor exercise on August 5 at the 2024 Paris Olympics. After her performance, the judges\u2019 scores put her in fifth place behind Romanian gymnast Ana B\u0103rbosu, who was in third place, and Romanian gymnast Sabrina Voinea, who was in fourth. Chiles\u2019 coach filed an inquiry regarding how her score was calculated.<\/p>\n

\u201cBased on the inquiry, the Gymnastics Technical Committee reviewed Jordan\u2019s D-score (degree of difficulty) and increased it by 0.1 point,\u201d explained Collins. \u201cThis revised score moved Jordan into bronze medal position, displacing B\u0103rbosu.\u201d<\/p>\n

A medal ceremony took place during which Chiles was awarded the bronze.<\/p>\n

Arbitration for Sport<\/h2>\n

Enter The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). It was created 40 years ago to quickly resolve sports-related disputes. The CAS Ad Hoc Division was created in 1996 to resolve disputes arising at the Atlanta Olympic Games. Every Olympic Games since then has had a CAS panel available on site to resolve disputes arising at the Games.<\/p>\n

\u201cCAS provides an independent and specialized forum for resolving sports-related disputes through arbitration and mediation. It functions independently from all sports and sports-related entities,\u201d explained Collins. Members of its governing body, the International Council of Arbitration for Sport, include sports law experts, former judges, and members of sports federations.<\/p>\n

CAS\u2019s jurisdiction is derived from arbitration clauses in contracts, competition rules, and statutes of sports organizations. International sports governing bodies and international sporting events, such as the Olympics, Commonwealth Games, and the FIFA World Cup, refer their disputes to CAS for resolution. Its awards are binding and enforceable under the 1958 New York Convention, with limited avenue of appeal to the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland.<\/p>\n

When an athlete wants to compete in one of these international events, they execute an agreement to let CAS\u2019s Ad Hoc Division arbitrate any disputes.<\/p>\n

\u2018It Resonated With Me\u2019<\/h2>\n

\u201cI have always been keenly interested in the Olympics as a spectator and aspiring competitor,\u201d said Collins.<\/p>\n

She was a member of the junior Women\u2019s Team Handball Team that trained in Atlanta with the senior Women\u2019s Team Handball Team as it prepared to compete in the 1996 Olympics.<\/p>\n

Collins represented the United States in the Pan American Games in 1999 and 2003 as a member of the U.S. Women\u2019s Team Handball Team. \u201cWe would have qualified for the Olympics with a gold medal at the Pan Am Games, but we lost in the semi-finals both times,\u201d recalled Collins, who was an NCAA finalist as a member of the tennis team at UCLA. Chiles is enrolled at UCLA.<\/p>\n

\u201c[The Chiles case] certainly resonated with me. When you compete in sports, especially at high levels, you\u2019re extremely aware of how referees\u2019 or judges\u2019 scores impact the results and the unfairness you feel, when you feel like they got it wrong. Watching both athletes on TV, when each one thought they had won, and when each one thought they had lost, I think everybody\u2019s heart went out to both of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Appeal<\/h2>\n

After Chiles was awarded the bronze, the Romanian Gymnastics Federation objected to the revised scoring, saying it took Chiles\u2019 coach too long to file her inquiry. Chiles\u2019 coach\u2019s inquiry took one minute and four seconds. The limit is one minute. The Romanians filed an appeal with the CAS. It agreed and Chiles was stripped of her gold medal and it was awarded to Barbosu.<\/p>\n

Several days later, USA Gymnastics obtained a video from a Netflix team that was shooting a documentary about Simone Biles. Chiles\u2019 coach was mic\u2019ed up during Chiles\u2019 event. \u201c[Chiles\u2019 coach] received audio and video which suggests that her inquiry may have been submitted within the allowable one-minute time frame,\u201d said Collins.<\/p>\n

USA Gymnastics asked CAS to re-open the case, but CAS declined, stating it has no procedure to allow it to reopen a case to consider new evidence.<\/p>\n

The Romanians proposed awarding bronze medals to Chiles, B\u0103rbosu, and Voinea. The three athletes agreed to the plan. The International Olympic Committee turned thumbs down.<\/p>\n

So, USA Gymnastics has appealed CAS\u2019s refusal to reopen the case to the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland, which is now considering it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Swiss Tribunal could either affirm CAS, it could reverse CAS or could send it back to CAS to hear the new evidence, or they could do nothing, or they could do something else, so it remains to be seen what might happen,\u201d explained Collins.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis incident has really shone a light on the importance of procedure in the sports world, and it is very similar to the importance of procedure in literally every legal proceeding. A lot of issues came up in the CAS hearing, which suggested that the processes and procedures for scoring inquiries in international gymnastics competitions should have been fairer and clearer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pride and Honor<\/h2>\n

In the lobby after the WCBA lunch, several attorneys pondered what a third place is worth from a personal injury perspective; what would be the economic damages?<\/p>\n

\u201cThose certainly could be debated,\u201d said Collins. \u201cAs a Remedies Professor [at Campbell School of Law], I look forward to maybe sometime debating this with my class.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s honestly at stake here for both athletes is the honor of bringing home a bronze medal as a representative of your country. We\u2019re really talking about pride and honor and being able to call yourself an Olympic medalist.\u201d<\/p>\n

The post The Intersection of Sports and Appeals at the 2024 Olympics<\/a> appeared first on Attorney at Law Magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland is now considering an appeal to decide the fate of the bronze medal awarded to American gymnast Jordan Chiles at the 2024 Paris Olympics. The bronze was initially awarded to Chiles, then taken away as a result of a decision by The Court of Arbitration for Sport in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-109288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal_matters"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109288\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}