The 2024 Paris Olympics are now complete with the US topping the overall medal table with 40 golds and 126 total medals. Here are some of the top stories from week 2.
Bronze In Women’s Gymnastics Floor Event Turns Into Appeals
Jordan Chiles was the last gymnast to compete in the women’s floor event on Monday, August 5th. Chiles was initially given a score of a 13.666, a score that put her in 5th place. Ana Barbousu of Romania was 3rd for the time being. Chiles’ coaches submitted an inquiry on her behalf upon receiving her score and the judges then adjusted Chiles’ score to have a degree of difficulty of a 5.9 instead of a 5.8. This moved Chiles up from 5th to 3rd, earning her a bronze medal alongside Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade who won gold, and Simone Biles of the US who won silver. The podium had marked the first time in history with an all-black podium for women’s gymnastics.
Barbousu and Romania submitted an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) stating that Chiles’ inquiry was submitted too late. Chiles’ inquiry was submitted at the one minute and four seconds mark, four seconds later than the one minute deadline. CAS ruled in favor of Barbousu, stating that the inquiry was submitted after the one-minute deadline.
“The inquiry submitted on behalf of Ms Jordan Chiles in the Final of the women’s Floor exercise was raised after the conclusion of the one-minute deadline provided by article 8.5 of the 2024 FIG Technical Regulations and is determined to be without effect,” the CAS decision read.
US Gymnastics has come out and said in reply, “The inquiry into the Difficulty Value of Jordan Chiles’ floor exercise routine was filed in good faith and, we believed, in accordance with FIG rules to ensure accurate scoring.”
The IOC has since said in a statement that Chiles must return her bronze medal. “Following the CAS decision with regard to the Women’s Artistic Gymnastics Floor Exercise Final and the amendment of the ranking by the International Gymnastics Federation, the IOC will reallocate the bronze medal to Ana Bărbosu. We are in touch with the NOC of Romania to discuss the reallocation ceremony and with USOPC regarding the return of the bronze medal.”
The US has since announced that they will be appealing the decision “We firmly believe that Jordan rightfully earned the bronze medal, and there were critical errors in both the initial scoring by the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) and the subsequent CAS appeal process that need to be addressed.”
China Sweeps Gold In All 8 Diving Events
China won gold in all eight diving events, becoming the first country to sweep all of the events since diving was expanded from four to eight events at the 2000 Olympics. China was one gold shy from the sweep at the 2020 Tokyo Games as Great Britain’s Tom Daley and diving partner Matty Lee captured gold, just over 1 point ahead of China’s duo of Cao Yuan and Chen Aisen.
Men’s Triple Jump Features Three Cuban Men, All Who Have Defected
The men’s triple jump featured three men who all are originally from Cuba. Jordan Diaz won gold while representing Spain, jumping to 17.86 meters. Diaz had represented Cuba at various competitions but defected from the Cuban delegation in June 2021, missing the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. He gained Spanish citizenship in 2022, breaking the national record shortly after. He was declared eligible by World Athletics in June 2024 to represent Spain.
Pedro Pichardo won silver in the triple jump, jumping 17.84 meters while representing Portugal. In April 2017, he was at a competition in Germany while representing Cuba but escaped from a team meeting. He appeared in Portugal a few days later and gained citizenship in December 2017. He began to represent Portugal in 2019 and won gold in the triple jump in Tokyo before winning silver in Paris.
Andy Diaz won bronze today while representing Italy, jumping 17.64 meters. He represented Cuba at numerous international competitions a few years ago, including the 2019 World Championships. He defected from Cuba and gained Italian citizenship in 2023. Now representing the country, he earned Italy its 3rd medal ever in the men’s triple jump.
COVID-19 Strikes Athletics As Noah Lyles Tests Positive
Noah Lyles of the US won gold in the men’s 100 meter race on the track winning in a time of 9.784 seconds, just five-thousandths ahead of Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson who ran a final time of a 9.789 in the photo finish race.
Lyles’ gold medal marked the first win for the US men in the 100 meter event since 2004. Lyles was looking to win another gold and came into the 200 meter event as one of the favorites. Lyles ended up winning bronze but revealed right after the race that he had tested positive for COVID-19.
Swimming saw numerous athletes test positive for COVID-19 such as Adam Peaty (Great Britain), David Johnston (USA), and Lani Pallister (Australia). Members of the Australian women’s water polo team also tested positive before the start of the Games.
Saint Lucia, Botswana Capture Historic Golds
Winning the men’s 200 meter race was Letsile Tebogo. That earned Botswana its first ever Olympic gold medal.
Tebogo was not the only runner to make history as Saint Lucia’s Julien Alfred won gold in the women’s 100 meter race. Alfred ran a time of a 10.72, finishing just ahead of Sha’Carri Richardson of the US who missed the 2020 Tokyo Games after testing positive for marijuana. Alfred captured the first medal of any kind for Saint Lucia in the 100 meter event and followed that medal up with silver in the women’s 200 meter event as well.
Breaking Makes Olympic Debut
Breaking made its Olympic debut this week with Japan’s Ami Yuasa taking home gold in the women’s competition and Canada’s Philip Kim walking away with gold in the men’s event.
16 breakers from each gender began with the round-robin stage before eight moved on to the knockout stage (1 vs 1). Scoring included five categories: technique, vocabulary, execution, musicality, and originality. Although the sport made its debut, it will not be featured at the 2028 LA Olympics.
Why is are elite athletes leaving Cuba?
Is it just me, or does this significantly tarnish the image of artistic gymnastics as a sport?
I have no doubt that the skills and routines these folks perform are incredibly difficult, and performances by Simone Biles, Jordan, Rebeca Andrade, et al are fun to watch!
But if the international governing body can’t figure out who won, even days later, and you have multiple groups submitting conflicting appeals, it really seems like the judging is broken. Maybe it’s less a sport, and more a (supremely athletic) art form, in the same vein as ballet.
I always stayed away from judged sports as a participant, and this really drives home the reason.
The code of points itself is very objective. All this mess is due to judging errors and does not occur very frequently at these elite competitions. This is just a very high profile cluster****.
I casually follow artistic gymnastics, and I know that the code of points is supposed to be objective. Like if you do skill X, it’s worth Y points in start value. In Jordan’s case, the judges missed a skill, and then awarded an incorrect start value.
Some other cases are at least well-defined on replay. I understand that the judges may also have made a questionable out-of-bounds ruling (which is worth a 0.1 deduction) for one of the other Romanian gymnasts in this event.
The part that I find most sketchy (which admittedly isn’t the issue in this case) is the subjective “execution” score (out of 10.0). I don’t think it’s possible to question the judges or ask for a… Read more »
It’s especially ridiculous because the correct order is that Voinea got 3rd (because she erroneously got penalized for stepping out of bounds, which she didn’t), then Chiles in 4th (because she erroneously got a lower difficulty rating than she should have), then Barbosu in 5th (who was scored correctly). And instead… after the CAS review… they decided to give Barbosu the bronze???
I mean, if you’re going to review and change the outcome days later, you should at least change it to be the correct one!
What makes it worse is that the Romanian Olympic committee explicitly noted that the judging was a hot mess and just asked them to award 3 bronze medals (to Barbosu, Chile’s, AND Voinea), but CAS rejected the Voinea appeal and seems to make this a US vs Romania issue when really its an athletes vs bad judging issue
I didn’t know that! I figured the Romanians just pettily objected to the US late appeal. Now I feel bad.
Good for the Romanians. Bad for CAS.
I didn’t realize Voinea was erroneously scored also! What a mess!
I think the whole disaster reinforces that even the people who are in charge and make decisions have no idea what they’re doing. You’d think the first issue they’d address when they received Jordan’s inquiry is.. is this legal? They’ve essentially messed up at every juncture.
The idea that you have to submit an appeal within 60 secs of the conclusion of the final performance in order for it to be valid is absurd. You literally would have to have the form filled out in advance, which I think Jordan’s coach did, because he knew the element she didn’t get credit for was routinely downgraded by international judges, and she just happened to do it better than usual on that day. Imagine having only 60 secs to analyze the judges detailed scoring, make a decision to appeal, fill out the form and get it to the head judge in 60 secs!
“Breaking” was a preposterous addition to the Olympics and I’m glad it will not be in LA in 2028
Wholeheartedly disagree.
It was so so cool to watch. The style, athleticism, the way the face off head to head makes it really cool from a competition standpoint. The only drawback is I think the casual viewer has no clue how the scoring works. Gymnastics we have learned over years of olympiads, but since breaking is so new, it is harder to recognize what is true skill. With that being said, I definitely thought it was one of the better things to watch at this Olympics. I would be happy to see it continue so we can learn the competition more.
Raygun is based
Jordan Chiles “Nah, I’ll just hang on to it.”