WASHINGTON — U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee chief executive officer Sarah Hirshland said Monday that the organization will continue to fight for gymnast Jordan Chiles to retain her bronze medal from the 2024 Paris Olympics for the simplest of reasons: Because she earned it.
‘We feel an obligation to make sure we get to the truth and the right outcome. So we’re going to fight to get there,’ Hirshland said from the South Lawn of the White House, where President Joe Biden welcomed and celebrated hundreds of Olympic and Paralympic athletes Monday morning.
‘We’ve had really constructive conversations with Jordan – and, frankly, with the Romanians. We’ve had a lot of dialogue with them. And it’s a constructive conversation. Of course, everybody’s got a vested interest. And the reality is the integrity of the competition is critical to sport, and we want to protect the integrity of competition.’
Chiles was stripped of the bronze medal she won on floor exercise last month amid a dispute over the timing of a scoring appeal filed by her coach, which bumped Chiles ahead of a pair of Romanian gymnasts and into third place.
The Romanian Gymnastics Federation successfully argued that the appeal, known as an inquiry, was filed four seconds too late − leading the Court of Arbitration for Sport to rule that the the results of the competition should be altered. But the Americans have since found video evidence that they hope will lead to the reversal of that ruling, and asked the Swiss Federal Tribunal to consider it, among a number of other procedural issues.
‘If we didn’t believe that she had earned the medal, we’d be in a different conversation. But we believe she earned that medal,’ Hirshland said. ‘So we’re going to ask the courts to look at the evidence again. Don’t know that they will or won’t, but that’s what we’re going to try.’
One possible outcome in the case − which has been supported by Romanian sports authorities − would be for Chiles, revised bronze medalist Ana Barbosu and compatriot Sabrina Maneca-Voinea to all share bronze. When asked if the U.S. would support such an outcome, Hirshland said it’s complicated.
‘There are a lot of details around how that might be done that I can’t give you a blanket answer,’ she said. ‘We support the integrity of the competition and getting to a result that reflects that. And we think, in every instance, that keeps a bronze medal in Jordan’s hands.’
Chiles did not make the trip to the White House on Monday, as she is currently performing as part of Simone Biles’ ‘Gold Over America Tour.’ But there were an estimated 400 other Team USA athletes who did, taking mini-tours of the White House and playing cornhole on the South Lawn before lining up on a set of bleachers to hear remarks from Biden. The president was accompanied to the event by U.S. swimmer Torri Huske and her parents, Paralympic basketball player Paul Schulte and Paralympic hopeful Adrina Castro.
‘My staff would have their TVs on, watching you as I was trying to get briefed on national security,’ Biden said to laughter. ‘But in fairness, I had the TV on in the Oval Office, as well. We felt so much pride.’
For Hirshland, who earlier this summer agreed to a five-year contract extension to remain in her post with the USOPC, the event felt like a wonderful coda to the Paris Olympic and Paralympic cycle. Team USA will now shift its focus to the 2026 Winter Games in Milano-Cortina, then the long-awaited 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles.
One of the lingering questions, particularly for 2026, is whether Russian athletes will be welcomed back to the Games. A select number of Russian athletes competed at the 2024 Games as ‘individual neutral athletes’ after the International Olympic Committee sanctioned Russia (and Belarus) for its invasion of Ukraine.
‘Obviously at the end of the day, the IOC makes the decision about the Games and the international federations make the decisions about their world cups and all of that,’ Hirshland said. ‘But they were suspended very clearly for violation of the Olympic truce and circumstances around that, which as far as I know have not changed.’
Hirshland also fielded questions on the ongoing dispute between the World Anti-Doping Agency and U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, entities that have taken repeated public shots at one another in recent months over WADA’s handling of 23 positive doping tests by Chinese swimmers in 2021. WADA agreed with Chinese anti-doping authorities, who found that the cases were the result of contamination and did not publicly disclose them. USADA has alleged that WADA effectively helped China keep the matter quiet and did not evenly apply anti-doping rules.
‘I will actually tell you I feel pretty optimistic that the conversations are constructive,’ Hirshland said of WADA and USADA. ‘What’s happening in the press, perhaps less so. But the actual conversations in the rooms I’m sitting in are constructive.’
Contact Tom Schad at tschad@usatoday.com or on social media @Tom_Schad.