The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) voided an on-floor appeal by Chiles' coach that vaulted her to third, saying the appeal came 4 seconds beyond the 1-minute time limit for scoring inquiries
So, if I get it right, they scored her wrong because they though she stepped out of bounds, but she actually didn’t. The coach appealed the scoring, and it was ruled that it was indeed ok, so she got points, which fairly placed her to 3rd place.
Now, it was overruled, because he appealed it 4 seconds late? That sounds pretty unfair, because it’s not about her performance, which was eventually scored fairly and should get her to 3rd place, but about the process of the appeal, and by such a narrow margin.
While I get that such rules are in place, it feels wrong. Needless bureaucracy, and in this case there wasn’t any malicious attempt to lawyer-up to get a medal she doesn’t deserve, it was just a wrong scoring that should’ve been corrected.
Do add to it, every other competitor had 4 minutes to initiate a challenge, but since Chiles was last to compete her team only got 1 minute.
Edit: I am sorry. I am incorrect. According to the rules, ref page 44, other competitors have until the next competitor is scored. The last competitor’s coaches have 1 minute to initiate an inquiry into the difficulty score verbally.
After any verbal inquiry is submitted, the coaches then have 4 minutes to submit the written inquiry.
The challenge can only be brought forward after the gymnast’s final score is posted and before the end of the next gymnast’s routine.
Floor routines are a maximum of 90 seconds, plus you figure maybe at least 30 seconds between a final score going up and the next person starting their routine.
Yes, sorry I should’ve been more clear. I had read the assertion that everyone but the last gymnast/group gets 4 minutes and wanted to find if that was the correct amount of time, because that seems grossly unbalanced.
2(ish) minutes is still better than 1. I think when the rule was made they could’ve easily done the math and made it so the last gymnast was given at least 2 minutes.
Judged sports are silly like this all the time. I fully appreciate the skill requirement to compete. But it makes them hard to take seriously at this level of competition.
I can’t take any of them seriously since I saw one of those fencing events where they kept pausing just in time so there was one second left on the clock repeatedly, basically taking advantage of rounding to full seconds to drag things out.
Yep, judging is always subjective. It’s what that specific judge (or panel of judges) saw, weighted against their own biases, both in the sport itself, and the players/teams/countries competing.
Unfortunately, that means results are often unfair.
This case is particularly egregious because it seems like the judges actually agree they made a mistake, but the correction was appealed purely on pedantic adherence to procedure.
I.E., no one is even disagreeing that she should have won the bronze if her performance was judged accurately.
Alright, I found an answer that’s very clear on the other site. I don’t know how accurate it is, but it certainly comes across as knowledgeable.
Both America’s Jordan Chiles and Romania’s Sabrina Maneca-Voinea challenged the judges’ assessment of their routine’s difficulty score. America was (initially) successful, Romania was not. Romania did not challenge the fact that they went out of bounds. This is why America’s score was adjusted up by 0.1.
Ana Bărbosu, also of Romania, scored equal to Voinea on 13.70, but took the lead due to the tiebreaking rules. Chiles was only slightly lower, on 13.66.
Someone called “Nadia”, who is not described in that article but who from my other Googling seems to be “the honorary president of the Romanian Gymnastics Federation”, tried to challenge the out-of-bounds call, but because she was not officially Voinea’s judge, was rebuked (though bizarrely, the judges apparently did tell her they had proof, rather than just flat-out refusing to discuss it with someone not entitled to have that discussion).
Romania challenged the judges’ on-the-ground decision about Chiles’ timing and about Voinea’s out-of-bounds to CAS, which overturned the initial decision of Chiles’ score based on the 1-minute rule, and said that Voinea’s timing alsowould have had to happen within the time limit, and because they didn’t (Nadia’s appeal not counting officially), CAS could not overturn the original call. There was no CAS appeal about Voinea’s difficulty score.
Also, @[email protected]’ point about most people having plenty of time to lodge a protest, but 1 minute for the last to go does indeed seem to be (at least implicitly) confirmed here.
So the final result:
Ana Bărbosu (Romania) scores 13.70, and there were no questions that her score was entirely correct. She gets bronze.
Sabrina Maneca-Voinea (Romania) scores 13.70. She officially appealed the difficulty but was overturned by ground judges and didn’t take it any further. She fails to properly appeal an out-of-bounds penalty and thus her score is 0.1 less than it perhaps should have been. She gets 4th.
Jordan Chiles (America) scores 13.66. She appealed the difficulty and initially had it increased such that her total score was 0.1 higher, but that increase was overturned after a ruling that the appeal came too late. She gets 5th.
As it is, everything actually ends up being exactly the same as the initial call the judges made. 2 people were arguably ripped off by poorly-applied or overly-strict rules, and the one who got bronze actually would have come last (out of these 3) if the loosest application of the rules applied.
All of this basically reinforces my pre-existing belief that subjectively-judged sports like gymnastics, diving, and BMX freestyle are not appropriate for the Olympics.
Thank you for the detailed explanation. It’s pretty confusing situation, but I think I kind of get what happened.
I agree with the last point, I always found it weird that it basically depends on subjective ratings. I don’t doubt the neutrality or professionalism of the judges, but it must be super hard to stay objective and not make mistakes.
No, the incorrect OOB was on one of the Romanian gymnasts. There was no category for incorrect OOB in the appeal form, so the Romanian coach appealed on a different category and the appeal was denied.
Chiles’ appeal was for elements that weren’t scored and the coach admitted not expecting the appeal to actually do anything.
When they modified Chiles’ score, Romanians were all like “of course Americans get their appeal heard and our gymnast is pushed off the podium”. Then there was the court ruling to reset the score back and Americans were all like “of course they give the white girl the bronze back and push the black girl off the podium”. Now it doesn’t help that a lot of Romanian idiots started hurling racist comments all over social media during the whole mess.
Overall, the Olympic committee screwed up and the gymnasts were the ones to suffer for it. The Romanian team asked to give bronze to both (they can give 3 bronze medals I believe), but for some reason that’s not what was decided in the end.
I thought the other gymnast got falsely called OOB, appealed successfully which pushed her into 3rd. Chiles’ coach had to appeal because the judges didn’t take into account a difficulty modifier and appealed 4 seconds late which was then appealed generating this mess.
What’s stupid is that the appeal which literally reinstated the simple mistake apparently has no statute of limitations. If I was the other competitor I would be horrified. What a tainted fucking way to get a medal.
I’ve gone searching for more answers. So far, have not found an explanation as to the main part of this, but did find some people suggesting that either Chiles’ appeal did not come 4 seconds late, or that at the very least there is insufficient evidence to confidently declare that it did come late.
4 seconds should be within the “margin or error” anyway, unless there is literally a visible appeals timer running, and an appeals button which stops it.
It can very easily be 4 seconds from the time someone calls for your attention, explains themselves in brief, and the time is recorded. That’s assuming everyone agrees on exactly when the countdown starts in the first place.
Honestly I’m really struggling with this article. It’s not clear at all about the important facts. I see your interpretation as possible, and also @[email protected]’s interpretation as possible.
My own interpretation was that America’s Chiles was docked .1 for a reason that is never specified in the article. She appealed, and was successful. The appeal was challenged in a higher court and overturned.
But that Romania’s Maneca-Voinea also got docked .1, for stepping out of bounds. She appealed, and was rejected despite evidence telling us she was right.
If my interpretation is right, it sounds like both athletes got unnecessarily stuffed around, and that the final result should have been that Maneca-Voinea gets the bronze medal.
So, if I get it right, they scored her wrong because they though she stepped out of bounds, but she actually didn’t. The coach appealed the scoring, and it was ruled that it was indeed ok, so she got points, which fairly placed her to 3rd place.
Now, it was overruled, because he appealed it 4 seconds late? That sounds pretty unfair, because it’s not about her performance, which was eventually scored fairly and should get her to 3rd place, but about the process of the appeal, and by such a narrow margin.
While I get that such rules are in place, it feels wrong. Needless bureaucracy, and in this case there wasn’t any malicious attempt to lawyer-up to get a medal she doesn’t deserve, it was just a wrong scoring that should’ve been corrected.
This situation sucks for all the involved.
Do add to it,
every other competitor had 4 minutes to initiate a challenge, but since Chiles was last to compete her team only got 1 minute.Edit: I am sorry. I am incorrect. According to the rules, ref page 44, other competitors have until the next competitor is scored. The last competitor’s coaches have 1 minute to initiate an inquiry into the difficulty score verbally.
After any verbal inquiry is submitted, the coaches then have 4 minutes to submit the written inquiry.
Wait, seriously? That’s absurd. Fuck that. I hope she keeps it.
I’m sorry, I was incorrect. Please see my edit.
I found this article explaining Olympics rules:
Floor routines are a maximum of 90 seconds, plus you figure maybe at least 30 seconds between a final score going up and the next person starting their routine.
Yep, except for the last gymnast to compete, which Chiles was
Yes, sorry I should’ve been more clear. I had read the assertion that everyone but the last gymnast/group gets 4 minutes and wanted to find if that was the correct amount of time, because that seems grossly unbalanced.
2(ish) minutes is still better than 1. I think when the rule was made they could’ve easily done the math and made it so the last gymnast was given at least 2 minutes.
Judged sports are silly like this all the time. I fully appreciate the skill requirement to compete. But it makes them hard to take seriously at this level of competition.
I can’t take any of them seriously since I saw one of those fencing events where they kept pausing just in time so there was one second left on the clock repeatedly, basically taking advantage of rounding to full seconds to drag things out.
Yep, judging is always subjective. It’s what that specific judge (or panel of judges) saw, weighted against their own biases, both in the sport itself, and the players/teams/countries competing.
Unfortunately, that means results are often unfair.
This case is particularly egregious because it seems like the judges actually agree they made a mistake, but the correction was appealed purely on pedantic adherence to procedure.
I.E., no one is even disagreeing that she should have won the bronze if her performance was judged accurately.
Alright, I found an answer that’s very clear on the other site. I don’t know how accurate it is, but it certainly comes across as knowledgeable.
Both America’s Jordan Chiles and Romania’s Sabrina Maneca-Voinea challenged the judges’ assessment of their routine’s difficulty score. America was (initially) successful, Romania was not. Romania did not challenge the fact that they went out of bounds. This is why America’s score was adjusted up by 0.1.
Ana Bărbosu, also of Romania, scored equal to Voinea on 13.70, but took the lead due to the tiebreaking rules. Chiles was only slightly lower, on 13.66.
Someone called “Nadia”, who is not described in that article but who from my other Googling seems to be “the honorary president of the Romanian Gymnastics Federation”, tried to challenge the out-of-bounds call, but because she was not officially Voinea’s judge, was rebuked (though bizarrely, the judges apparently did tell her they had proof, rather than just flat-out refusing to discuss it with someone not entitled to have that discussion).
Romania challenged the judges’ on-the-ground decision about Chiles’ timing and about Voinea’s out-of-bounds to CAS, which overturned the initial decision of Chiles’ score based on the 1-minute rule, and said that Voinea’s timing alsowould have had to happen within the time limit, and because they didn’t (Nadia’s appeal not counting officially), CAS could not overturn the original call. There was no CAS appeal about Voinea’s difficulty score.
Also, @[email protected]’ point about most people having plenty of time to lodge a protest, but 1 minute for the last to go does indeed seem to be (at least implicitly) confirmed here.
So the final result:
Ana Bărbosu (Romania) scores 13.70, and there were no questions that her score was entirely correct. She gets bronze.
Sabrina Maneca-Voinea (Romania) scores 13.70. She officially appealed the difficulty but was overturned by ground judges and didn’t take it any further. She fails to properly appeal an out-of-bounds penalty and thus her score is 0.1 less than it perhaps should have been. She gets 4th.
Jordan Chiles (America) scores 13.66. She appealed the difficulty and initially had it increased such that her total score was 0.1 higher, but that increase was overturned after a ruling that the appeal came too late. She gets 5th.
As it is, everything actually ends up being exactly the same as the initial call the judges made. 2 people were arguably ripped off by poorly-applied or overly-strict rules, and the one who got bronze actually would have come last (out of these 3) if the loosest application of the rules applied.
All of this basically reinforces my pre-existing belief that subjectively-judged sports like gymnastics, diving, and BMX freestyle are not appropriate for the Olympics.
Thank you for the detailed explanation. It’s pretty confusing situation, but I think I kind of get what happened.
I agree with the last point, I always found it weird that it basically depends on subjective ratings. I don’t doubt the neutrality or professionalism of the judges, but it must be super hard to stay objective and not make mistakes.
No, the incorrect OOB was on one of the Romanian gymnasts. There was no category for incorrect OOB in the appeal form, so the Romanian coach appealed on a different category and the appeal was denied.
Chiles’ appeal was for elements that weren’t scored and the coach admitted not expecting the appeal to actually do anything.
When they modified Chiles’ score, Romanians were all like “of course Americans get their appeal heard and our gymnast is pushed off the podium”. Then there was the court ruling to reset the score back and Americans were all like “of course they give the white girl the bronze back and push the black girl off the podium”. Now it doesn’t help that a lot of Romanian idiots started hurling racist comments all over social media during the whole mess.
Overall, the Olympic committee screwed up and the gymnasts were the ones to suffer for it. The Romanian team asked to give bronze to both (they can give 3 bronze medals I believe), but for some reason that’s not what was decided in the end.
I thought the other gymnast got falsely called OOB, appealed successfully which pushed her into 3rd. Chiles’ coach had to appeal because the judges didn’t take into account a difficulty modifier and appealed 4 seconds late which was then appealed generating this mess.
edit: here’s an AP article: https://apnews.com/article/2024-olympics-jordan-chiles-bronze-5a7db5537e2defb3ebe57b0b746556f3
Looks like the woman who is awarded Bronze didn’t get accused of OOB, it was her teammate who is now 4th. What a shitshow
What’s stupid is that the appeal which literally reinstated the simple mistake apparently has no statute of limitations. If I was the other competitor I would be horrified. What a tainted fucking way to get a medal.
I’ve gone searching for more answers. So far, have not found an explanation as to the main part of this, but did find some people suggesting that either Chiles’ appeal did not come 4 seconds late, or that at the very least there is insufficient evidence to confidently declare that it did come late.
4 seconds should be within the “margin or error” anyway, unless there is literally a visible appeals timer running, and an appeals button which stops it.
It can very easily be 4 seconds from the time someone calls for your attention, explains themselves in brief, and the time is recorded. That’s assuming everyone agrees on exactly when the countdown starts in the first place.
Honestly I’m really struggling with this article. It’s not clear at all about the important facts. I see your interpretation as possible, and also @[email protected]’s interpretation as possible.
My own interpretation was that America’s Chiles was docked .1 for a reason that is never specified in the article. She appealed, and was successful. The appeal was challenged in a higher court and overturned.
But that Romania’s Maneca-Voinea also got docked .1, for stepping out of bounds. She appealed, and was rejected despite evidence telling us she was right.
If my interpretation is right, it sounds like both athletes got unnecessarily stuffed around, and that the final result should have been that Maneca-Voinea gets the bronze medal.
This is what happens when nerds are in charge.