Not since the time when officials outrageously gave the Soviet basketball team three chances to make the gold-medal-winning shot over the U.S. in 1972 has an Olympic medal decision been so brazenly unjust. There is, however, an argument to be made for a solution to satisfy all sides.
At issue is the already infamous back-and-forth about which athlete should get the bronze medal for the women's gymnastics floor exercises at the Paris Olympics . The judges first awarded the medal to Romanian Ana Bărbosu, but upon an appeal by U.S. coaches, the judges gave it to American Jordan Chiles instead. Then, a higher bureaucracy, the Court of Arbitration for Sport, reversed the earlier reversal and demanded that Chiles give the medal back to Bărbosu. The arbitrators’ decision stinks like three-day-old roadkill.
I’m no gymnastics expert, but certain elements in this brouhaha appear to be incontrovertible. The first is that while there, of course, is at least some subjectivity in judging gymnastics, everybody officially stipulates that one of the largely objective parts of judging, a “degree of difficulty” calculation for specific elements of the routine, had been inaccurately recorded. If that's the case, then Chiles deserved to have her original score recalculated upward. In terms of who actually earned the medal, then, Chiles was the winner. Period, case closed.
As Romanian Olympic legend Nadia Comaneci accurately noted, this was emotionally devastating, even unfair, to Bărbosu. On the other hand, it is, in essence, no different than an NFL final-play goal-line call being reversed upon video review, thus turning the apparent winners into losers. If the revised call upon review is correct, it’s correct, no matter how it hurts those who first were told incorrectly that they had won.
Then, the Court of Arbitration for Sport butted in. Somehow it claimed that while gymnastics rules require appeals of judges’ scores to be filed within a single minute, the American coach took 64 seconds, a mere four seconds too many, to appeal. The medal, it ruled, must go back to Bărbosu. On such a tiny technicality, it said that an objectively mistaken judges’ score should be reinstated.
Here’s where things get not just wrongheaded but morally corrupt. The U.S. coaches offered to submit video proof that they had filed the appeal not just within the one-minute allotment, but actually with 13 seconds to spare. Assuming that is true, then this should be case closed in Chiles’s favor. The officious arbitrators have no right, zero, to overturn a correct decision on the basis of a technicality that itself is inaccurate. Either the coaches violated the technicality or they didn’t, but if the arbitrators themselves are wrong about the technicality, there are no possible ethical grounds for them to apply that technicality. Arbitrators can’t say: “We were wrong about the coaches being wrong, but the coaches have to live with our mistake.” That’s insanity.
But that’s what the arbitrators are doing, and that’s what the International Olympic Committee is imposing. The arbitrators say that their own rulings, once made, cannot be changed — even if incorrect.
As it turns out, though, the “bad guys” here, or maybe the worse guys, are at the Federation for International Gymnastics, to whose decision the IOC is adhering. Not only did the court of arbitration fault the FIG's original procedures for causing the confusion, but it also offered the FIG a way out: “equitable” principles. Because both athletes have been convincingly told, at different times, that each won the medal, with Bărbosu now having been told this twice, the arbitration court suggested that the FIG should provide bronze medals to both. That actually makes sense: At some point, sportsmanship should reign, rather than snooty officials trying to outdo each other in legalistic pretentiousness.
Chiles herself showed exalted, spontaneous sportsmanship, although at an ill-chosen time and place, by literally bowing to gold-medal winner Rebeca Andrade of Brazil during the medal ceremony.
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Meanwhile, the principle of “ equitable relief ,” not to be confused with woke notions of economic “ equity ,” has a half-millennium-long history in both law and sport, allowing for obvious injustices to be mutually wiped away regardless of technicalities. In golf’s Presidents Cup in 2003, captains Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player agreed on the spot , without rules specifying their power to do so, that the overall international team match would end in a tie when darkness halted a playoff between stars Tiger Woods and Ernie Els. They were right to do so.
So far, though, the FIG has rejected this obvious solution. Instead, it has physically given a bronze medal to Bărbosu, while insisting that Chiles return the bronze medal that she actually won fair and square where it counts, in the actual arena. This is absurd. The FIG should allow both athletes to keep their medals that each had reason to believe she had earned through meritorious performance. Either way, no matter what the FIG puts in its records, Chiles should keep her medal and wear it proudly, rather than returning it. Tell the officious officials to buzz off. At some point, to slightly amend an old statement, possession is the law — especially when the possession was rightly won in the first place.
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