The ongoing controversy regarding the Jordan Chiles appeal has led to the Swiss Federal Tribunal, which is not a well-known entity for those in the United States. The legal process that USA Gymnastics has to go through for Chiles to potentially keep her bronze medal in women’s floor exercise at the 2024 Paris Olympics looks like it’s going to a tough road. Here’s some clarification on what the Swiss Federal Tribunal is, and how it could help prevent Chiles from being stripped of her Olympic medal.
How does the Swiss Federal Tribunal relate to the Jordan Chiles appeal?
The Swiss Federal Tribunal is another name for the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland, which is the head of the Swiss judiciary and takes appeals from rulings made by arbitral tribunals like the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
On August 12, 2024, USA Gymnastics made a statement on X (formerly known as Twitter) declaring its disappointment that CAS has rejected its appeal to submit new evidence. This is regarding the ruling that CAS made earlier in August that effectively made Chiles lose her bronze medal and reinstated gymnast Ana Barbosu of Romania as the bronze-medal winner instead.
However, despite USA Gymnastics saying that it has new video evidence to submit that could overturn CAS’s decision, the tribunal said that “its rules do not allow for an arbitral award to be reconsidered even when conclusive new evidence is presented.” This policy is harsh compared to legal procedures in the United States where new exonerating evidence could be used as a part of an appeal. That said, this decision is not particularly surprising given that CAS’s decisions are final according to its rules.
This is why USA Gymnastics will pursue alternate routes, including the Swiss Federal Tribunal, as part of the appeals process. It’s rare, but the Swiss Federal Tribunal has in the past overturned decisions made by CAS. It annulled a decision in 2012 regarding Brazilian football player Francelino da Silva Matuzalem and in 2020 regarding a ban on Chinese swimmer Sun Yang.
What is the new video evidence from USA Gymnastics supporting Jordan Chiles?
USA Gymnastics on August 11, 2024 said that it has video evidence showing that the inquiry Jordan Chiles’ coach Cecile Landi made was within the 1-minute time limit.
CAS originally declared that Landi had made her inquiry into Chiles’s score four seconds too late, which is why the court invalidated it. Chiles was effectively stripped of her bronze medal due to a procedural technicality. But a timestamped video USA Gymnastics had obtained afterwards is said to show that Landi made an inquiry at 47 seconds, with a second statement made at 55 seconds. This evidence was “not available to USA Gymnastics prior to the tribunal’s decision.”
This isn’t the only wrinkle in the Jordan Chiles controversy. USA Today’s Christine Brennan on August 12 stated on X that she heard CAS reached out to the wrong US officials during the preparations for the initial appeal by Romania’s gymnastics body. The New York Times reports that the head of the CAS panel that ruled against Jordan Chiles had represented Romania for a decade in arbitration cases.
According to Christine Brennan in an interview with CNN, the Swiss Federal Tribunal is a judicial body that bases its decision on “procedural” grounds. So she believes that the new video evidence from USA Gymnastics “would play well with that Swiss tribunal.”
Brennan also points out later in the interview that the Romanian and US gymnastics bodies initially wanted the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to award a bronze medal to both Chiles and Barbosu, but that proposal was rejected. Instead of that outcome, we now have a controversy that has exploded since the 2024 Olympic Games and will likely be mired in the legal process for a long time.
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