IIn 1972, the U.S. men’s Olympic basketball team took a one-point lead over the Soviet Union in the gold medal game in Munich with three seconds left on the clock. a chaotic sequence of eventsthose three seconds were played three times. The third time was the charm, at least for the Soviets, and they won by one point.
The American men have refused to accept their silver medals for 52 years. They sit unclaimed in Lausanne, Switzerland, and the International Olympic Committee refuses to reconsider the outcome of the competition.
However, the IOC has asked American gymnast Jordan Chiles to return a bronze medal due to another timing issue – this time a complete four seconds.
Under gymnastics rules, a request for an investigation must be filed within one minute of the posting of a score. The U.S. filed such an investigation into Chiles’ score, arguing that the judges had made an objectively provable error in one aspect of her floor exercise. The investigation was upheld, and Chiles was awarded the bronze medal. However, the Romanian Gymnastics Federation appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas), arguing that the investigation was filed 64 seconds after Chiles’ score was posted. CAS agreed, and the IOC is asking Chiles to return her allegedly ill-gotten bronze medal.
The irony in Cas of Romania’s Profession is that the federation also attempted to appeal a 0.1-point penalty given to Sabrina Maneca-Voinea, although the timing of such an appeal can be measured on a calendar rather than a stopwatch. CAS rejected that aspect of Romania’s appeal in one sentence.
But Romanian gymnastics officials did not ask for Chiles to return her bronze medal. They asked for double bronze medals for Maneca-Voinea and Ana Barbosu, who the IOC has now declared a bronze medalist.
And there is indeed a precedent for awarding double medals when judging questions become too complicated to answer. That precedent was set in 2002, when a scandal that escalated to allegations of Russian mafia interference led the IOC to award a double gold medal to Canadian figure skating pair Jamie Sale and David Pelletier.
Another precedent to consider – Jim Thorpe, whose name is mentioned in every discussion of the greatest athletes ever, was stripped of his gold medals in the 1912 Olympic decathlon and pentathlon after authorities discovered he was earning about $30 a month playing minor league baseball, violating the Games’ amateur rules. He lost the gold medals even though the 60-day deadline for appeals to strip athletes of medals had long since passed, by about four months. A mere 110 years later, Thorpe would be declared the sole winner of those events.
The argument that Chile should not keep the bronze is that rules are rules and the US simply filed the investigation four seconds too late.
Or did they?
The USOPC argues that no time had been given to prepare an adequate defense. On Sunday afternoon, USA Gymnastics dropped a bombshellclaiming that there is time-stamped evidence that the investigation most certainly was requested within one minute of the score being published – 47 seconds to be exact.
“The video footage was not available to USA Gymnastics prior to the court’s decision and USAG therefore did not have the opportunity to submit it earlier,” the USAG statement said.
Even as CAS, the IOC and the International Gymnastics Federation criticize this new evidence, they find themselves in the awkward position of having to demand the return of a medal, even after the judges concluded that Chiles was indeed the gymnast who performed the third-best floor routine. And they’ve put two innocent athletes through hell. Barbosu was clearly devastated when her celebration was interrupted by the announcement of Chiles’ successful investigation, and now the American has retreated from social media to protect her mental health as she weighs whether she should really send a bronze medal to France, Switzerland or Romania.
If the new evidence holds up, the governing bodies will have no choice but to let Chiles keep the medal – which would be devastating for Barbosu again. And if they decide not to award multiple bronze medals, the IOC will have to say what makes this situation different from what happened in 2002.
The whole situation is a mess and those who suffer the most are the athletes who have done nothing wrong.