Jordan Chiles Explains Why She Felt Silenced After Being Stripped of Bronze Medal

Though she didn’t say much after releasing a statement in mid-August after being stripped of her Olympic bronze medal, most assumed USA gymnast Jordan Chiles was going through an emotional wringer.

Chiles, who said the International Olympic Committee’s decision to take her medal away felt unjust, broke her silence about the incident Wednesday at Forbes’ 2024 Power Women’s Summit, in which she addressed what it was like for her in the days after the IOC’s controversial ruling.

The 23-year-old admitted the Olympic drama robbed her of the person she was, and even worse, she admitted that she also felt like she had lost her voice and her passion along the way, similar to a previous time in her life.

“Back in 2018 I was in a situation in dealing with a coach who emotionally and verbally abused me,” Chiles said . “I didn’t have the ability to use my voice or be heard, and that is one thing that I feel like now in this instance of being in this situation that I wasn’t able to be hear. No one was listening to the fact that there are things we have in place, there are things we have that should’ve been seen but weren’t taken [seriously]. They wanted it to be all about the Olympics and this and that — it’s a picture.

“But I made history and I will continue to make history. It’s something that I rightfully did, I followed the rules, my coach followed the rules, we did everything that was totally, completely right. So, being left in the dark is something that I feel like they just took that all away and was just trying to put the name gymnastics in front of it.”

It’s not known specifically what Chiles was referring to, but one could assume it had to do with how her score inquiry during the floor exercise final at the 2024 Paris Olympics went down.

USA Gymnastics claims it has video proof that Chiles’ score inquiry was submitted twice within the one-minute window allowed to do so.

Additionally, as Olympic gold medalist and former Team USA gymnast Aly Riasman pointed out, the judges accepted Chiles’ score inquiry during the event, which shows it had to have been filed in time because both Rebeca Andrade and Sabrina Voinea submitted score inquiries of their own and were both denied.

There’s still a sliver of hope that Chiles could get her bronze medal back, however.

The Romanian Gymnastics Federation recently divulged it has requested a dialogue with Chiles after a meeting with the Swiss Federal Tribunal to discuss possibly awarding her, Ana Barbosu and Voinea all bronze medals.

USA Gymnastics and the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee are also appealing her case to the SFT as well in the hope the video evidence of her score inquiry being perfectly legal is enough to overrule the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s ruling that led to her losing her medal in the first place.

Related: Jordan Chiles' Eye-Opening Admission About Fallout From Olympics Controversy