Jordan Chiles reveals emotional journey to reclaim Olympic bronze: ‘We literally didn’t do anything wrong’

Jordan Chiles is intensifying her efforts to reclaim her Olympic bronze medal, which was stripped following a controversial ruling during the 2024 Paris Olympics.

In her first live TV interview on the matter, 23-year-old gymnast Jordan Chiles appeared on the Today show Monday, detailing the uphill battle she and her legal team have faced since the Olympics ended. Although she still has the medal in hand, official records were adjusted to show her in 5th place, rather than the 3rd-place finish she initially secured.

Her team is now exploring various legal avenues to restore the scores.

“It’s hard to tell yourself everything is going to be fine when we literally didn’t do anything wrong. Everything was in the time that it needed to be,” Chiles admitted. “For them to come back and say it was four seconds too late when we have proof … I can only control what my truth is and I know that we were right.”

Although Chiles initially placed 5th in the floor exercise event at the Paris Olympics in August, her coach, Cecile Landi, flagged a judging error in the difficulty rating of her routine. Once the score was corrected, Chiles moved to 3rd place, securing the bronze medal.

However, on the final day of the Games, the International Olympic Committee announced it would honor a ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which stated that Landi’s protest had been filed 64 seconds after scores were posted—just four seconds past the one-minute deadline. Her bronze medal was reallocated to 18-year-old Romanian gymnast Ana Bărbosu.

Chiles and her team have since argued that video evidence shows the inquiry was made within the 60-second window. In September, Chiles, supported by the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee and USA Gymnastics, appealed to Switzerland’s Supreme Court, asking them to overturn the decision that cost her the bronze. In a statement to The Independent at the time, the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee said it “strongly contests” the arbitrator body’s ruling “due to significant procedural errors.”

When Today host Hoda Kotb asked Chiles why this medal holds such deep significance, pointing out that she already has a team gold from Paris and a bronze from Tokyo three years ago, the gymnast explained that it was meaningful for multiple reasons.

“It was like a cherry on top. My redemption tour going into Paris was ‘Yes.’ Coming back with a gold, coming back with the understanding that I was able to go out there and be the best version of myself,” she said. “With this floor medal it was like ‘Wow, I never expected myself to make a floor final.’”

“Plus it was an all Black podium,” she added. “That was history being made. I was very glad to be a part of.”

Following the controversy, Chiles - whose father is Black and mother is Latina - has been targeted by a wave of racist backlash online. In September, she spoke out about the discrimination she’s faced during a speech at the 2024 Forbes Power Women Summit.

“To me, everything that has gone on, it’s not about the medal,” she said. “It’s about, you know, 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. I felt like [I did] when I was back in 2018, where I did lose the love of the sport, I lost it again.”

The medal controversy resurfaced past experiences of racism and the intense pressures of her sport, with Chiles recalling similar verbal abuse from a coach back in 2018. But ultimately, the gymnast noted that if anything this ordeal has taught her, it’s that her story has only begun.

“I’ll be able to overcome this. And I’ll be able to look back and say, ‘You know what? That was just a portion of my story, but it’s the truth,’” she told Kotb on Monday, confident that the best is yet to come.