In 2024, the Bronze Was Unfairly Taken from Jordan Chiles. A Recent Court Win Means She Might Get It Back

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:01 Jenessa: People are crying. It's unbelievable. What a way to end the Olympics. And then a lawsuit takes the bronze medal away from Jordan Childs.

0:00:18 Jenessa: This is the first time ever that an athlete has been stripped of their medal in Olympic history who was not doping or cheating.

0:00:38 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is, I believe, OA1234. I'm pretty sure. I think. It's hard to know the number. It gets a little weird with the extra episodes and the fabulous response and the YouTubes and everything. But it's possible that we are here for episode 1234, which is really fun. I am Thomas Smith. That over there is Jenessa. How are you doing?

0:00:58 Jenessa: I'm doing great.

0:00:59 Thomas: You better be more than great after being honored with the great number 1234. before. Ooh, we're talking numbers. Well, now I'm extra great. Love numbers.

0:01:03 Jenessa: Yeah, I'm excited. And we're talking numbers today, so it's perfect. Yeah. So

0:01:11 Thomas: What kind of numbers are we going to be talking about?

0:01:13 Jenessa: We're talking gymnastics scoring numbers, which are some of the most complicated numbers out there. Yeah.

0:01:19 Thomas: Why are we talking gymnastics numbers? That doesn't sound like a law show.

0:01:22 Jenessa: So this is Court of Arbitration for Sport.

0:01:26 Thomas: Ooh. Sport court.

0:01:27 Jenessa: So if we want to get a little off the news today and talk about something a little more chill, democracy does not hang in the balance here.

0:01:35 Thomas: Yeah, no kidding.

0:01:36 Jenessa: But I still think anybody should care about it. Even if you don't love gymnastics or sports, there's a lot of unusual, surprising stuff that happened and a lot lot of firsts. And it's really a microcosm of what's been happening culturally in sports with protecting young athletes. So hopefully it'll be interesting for everybody, even if you don't love gymnastics.

0:02:00 Thomas: I was excited when you mentioned this because it's like, you know, obviously there's the usual awful end of democracy fascism and it's, like, we do need to cover that, but it gets a little tiring. And then, of course, we have Epstein, which is emotionally exhausting. So I was like, you know what? Yes, please deliver unto me gymnastics. We need that. That's nice. But it'll be interesting. I can't wait. I'm excited to hear what happens. So why don't we take our first break, which you can avoid at patreon .com slash law. Thanks so much. And we'll take a break and get to it.

0:02:31 Ad: [Ad break 1 — ad music]

0:02:31 Thomas: All right. Someone did a flip and a number happened. What is that basically it?

0:02:35 Jenessa: Yeah, okay. So this is in the Paris 2024 Olympics on the floor event final, there was some relatively unsurprising questions about scores. You can put in an inquiry and say, I don't think you got my difficulty score right.

0:02:55 Thomas: Oh boy. I think you're going to have to explain more or are you trying not to get into it?

0:02:59 Jenessa: Yeah. Okay. So you've got vault, floor, bars, and beam. Floor is probably the one you think of when you think about gymnastics. The music, the dance, the tumbling on that square.

0:03:11 Thomas: I like how they have the one where someone built some bars badly so that they're uneven and then they're like well we'll just have to do this event on the uneven

0:03:17 Jenessa: Well, it actually comes from in the men's event, they have the parallel bars. And for women's, the old school version was just that, but with one of them higher.

0:03:24 Thomas: Bars that's so interesting they're like women ladies can't handle bars being parallel maybe men can't handle them not being

0:03:38 Jenessa: If you ever watch women try men's or men try women's.

0:03:40 Thomas: Parallel yeah I actually have seen that they are both extremely bad at either right like it's like they're very specialized

0:03:44 Jenessa: It's pretty, yeah, yes. The floor and the vault are pretty much the same. The men's vaulting table is set a little higher, but otherwise it's the same equipment and roughly the same stuff. Men don't do the beam. Women do uneven bars where men do parallel bars uh men do rings women just don't do that um there's one other one for the men oh the pommel horse women don't doing that

0:04:04 Thomas: Oh yeah what's the like pommel horse Yeah, I was just going to ask about the pommel horse. We men are the only ones who can pommel horses.

0:04:11 Jenessa: The rings the pomell horse the parallel bars those are really focused on upper body strength which like I would argue today like the elite women's gymnastics could totally handle it if you trained on it but old school gymnastics was not preparing for women to do those events

0:04:29 Thomas: That is certainly one of the pretty clear differences on average is the upper strength versus the lower. You know, I play hockey and the women are much better skaters oftentimes because their weight is lower and it's like, it's nice for the balance, you know?

0:04:40 Jenessa: That makes sense beam was my specialty when I was competing and um if you split fall on the beam it's um not a fun experience for anyone

0:04:48 Thomas: Oh, I see. Yeah. So they're, okay. So they like, they don't, they want the men to still be able to have kids, I guess. Is it what you're saying?

0:04:58 Jenessa: I think like genuinely falling on the beam with testicles is a level of danger that no one would tolerate in the sport yes

0:05:05 Thomas: Yeah yeah okay fair so okay so we got the floor routine there's a lot of flipping and dancing and jumping

0:05:10 Jenessa: Basically there's a qualifying night where everybody shows up who qualified for the Olympics generally, and you do all the routines you're hoping to medal on, and they take the scores that night and they figure out, okay, the top eight teams, you're going to compete in a team competition, and that's assembled by the scores of multiple gymnasts from that country. The top 24 all -around gymnasts, you are going to go into the all -arounds. That's And you're the best and you're going to do all four and try to win.

0:05:47 Thomas: Oh but they're the same events essentially for each of those things just individual versus team okay

0:05:53 Jenessa: So there's a team competition and then where you would win as a team, there's individual competitions where you get a medal just for you. And then on the individual events, they'll say the top eight best bars, you're gonna compete for the bars medal. So you're up there for like a minute on the bars and that determines the medal. For the floor on qualifying night, there was actually two people tied for eighth. So nine people are going to go into this floor final competition.

0:06:24 Jenessa: The floor final ends up being just by, you know, how it's set up. It's the last event of women's gymnastics of the entire Paris 2024 Olympics. So it's, you Know, it's the Last Thing we're going to do. It's all very exciting. We're building up to it. This is also, it's a big one because the Paris Olympics in general, we're coming off of a lot of scandals in women's gymnastics. We're coming off of the Larry Nassar scandal.

0:06:55 Jenessa: Marta and Bella Caroli have fled the United States, probably back to Romania, their home country.

0:06:55 Thomas: Wait

0:07:04 Jenessa: They are two

0:07:02 Thomas: What who are who are they what do they do oh

0:07:06 Jenessa: Very famous coaches, they were famous in Romania, then they came to the U .S. and they were very famous here, and they have been accused of physical and verbal abuse themselves and also covering for Nassar. People are probably familiar with the Larry Nassir sex abuse scandal.

0:07:23 Thomas: Yeah but I didn't know like romanians why what did they have to do with or was oh they were coaching

0:07:26 Jenessa: Well, they Were really great coaches in Romania and then they immigrated to the US and coached here.

0:07:30 Thomas: Here oh okay oh gotcha okay

0:07:33 Jenessa: Presumably to avoid consequences are Bella has since died Marta's whereabouts are unknown the articles about Bella's death don't say where he died like they just are in hiding so we're coming off of really bad scandals and a big change in the culture where you know for a long time gymnastics just really valued these tiny itty bitty ballerina bodies to do cute little leaps and turns and dance. And that meant young prepubescent bodies and young kids meant easy to control and easy to abuse. And there were just so many problems. And because of so many really really brave girls and women speaking up about what happened to them. And because of changes in rules around scoring, where they started to value difficulty, which valued big, strong bodies that could tumble really high and vault really high, that started to valu healthy bodies and older bodies. And it started to valuelonger careers. You weren't just washed up at 18. There are changes in the rules that are making it so you can be an elite gymnast, go to college and compete, go back to the elite level, and there's no longer a presumption that that won't work. There's no long presumption you're just too old now. The NCAA rules that you can get paid mean you go to the Olympics, you take a sponsorship deal, you can still compete in college. Things are just getting better. It's not that nobody's in bad shape. It's that there's no abuse happening I don't want to

0:09:20 Jenessa: Create an impression that like we can just get lax now, but it's just so Visible on everyone's faces. These are women mostly adults competing There's some six and sixteen and seventeen year olds but it a lot of people in their 20s some people in there 30s are competing and There's big smiles. There's cheering for each other. There are people from other countries cheering on their biggest competition big hugs across countries like that is not how it used to be it was all drama and snobbery and tears and yeah because they were literal children of course they're crying when they lose oh

0:10:02 Thomas: Yeah I didn't know that changed I had no I would have thought it was still just children because they were so young in like the 90s

0:10:10 Jenessa: Yeah and like I was a kid so it didn't feel weird to me that I was like you know six looking up to a 14 year old but when you realize it was like adults were obsessed with watching like 13 year olds tumbling around like it's weird right uh

0:10:12 Thomas: Right yeah yeah yeah oh yeah and I thought it's just because like oh they have to be so small that they you know you kind of age out of it and so you're saying that changed

0:10:34 Jenessa: They do still on average are very short but just kind of as a matter of genetics but the being extremely thin thing is not so anymore like take a look at the thighs and butts on these women and it's it's a whole other world now. Extremely fit, thick, muscular people because in order to tumble really high, in order To hit the springboard on the vault and get momentum, you need to be bigger. You need to Be stronger. They're still you know, they don't look like bodybuilders. They don't Look like the heavy weight lifters, but they don' look emaciated it anymore which is nice so yeah it was just like the mood is so much better you know Simone is back after things did not go well in Tokyo people probably remember she had to drop out after some just really bad sports psychology issue basically of having trouble in the air that was Tokyo's the one before

0:11:34 Thomas: Yeah I couldn't remember which one that was yeah so she oh geez time has flown

0:11:41 Jenessa: And people often forget like two months later she was testifying before Congress about out abuse by Nassar at the Olympics before that. So like, yeah, kind of understandable, right? A lot going on. She's back. A bunch of people from Tokyo are back. And all of a sudden, oh my god, like you don't age out of this career four years later. Smiles on faces, a lot of women coaching. It's just, oh man, it's going great.

0:11:52 Thomas: A lot going on yeah yeah right

0:12:09 Jenessa: Everybody's excited. And then the floor final is even more exciting. We have Rebecca Andrade of Brazil, who is unbelievable, amazing, ends up taking the gold when Biles was expected to always take the gold on everything. Andrade has been chasing Biles her whole career. She's an incredible gymnast. It's just like Biles is superhuman.

0:12:08 Thomas: Yeah sure

0:12:36 Jenessa: Simone made some big mistakes, and it was always known if she made a big mistake, Rebecca was going to get up there. And it's the first ever all -black podium in Olympic gymnastics history. Andrade is Afro -Brazilian, Simone Biles is black, comes in second, Jordan Childs is black comes in third. There's this iconic picture of Biles and Childs bowing when Andrade gets up there. It's everybody's excited and people are crying, it's unbelievable. What a way to end the Olympics. And then a lawsuit takes the bronze medal away from Jordan Childs. And it felt rough.

0:13:17 Thomas: When was that how long long after did that happen?

0:13:20 Jenessa: It was a couple of days later. It starts, it's filed immediately the next day, but people don't get word of it for days. So I'm saying like, oh, everybody is so happy. Hooray, hooray. Not everybody. So Romania used to be the most dominant country in gymnastics. They fell off for a long time. They're finally back at the Olympics. They've qualified again as a team for the first time in forever. They are so clearly the model of the old way of doing gymnastics. Looking at this team, the average age of every other team is older than the oldest Romanian gymnast. They are 16, 17, 18, all of them. They look exhausted. They do not have smiles on their faces. They do Not look happy to be here. Camilla Voynia is coaching her daughter, Sabrina Maneca Voynia. We will find out within a year of this Olympics, Camilla gets accused of abuse by many of her former gymnasts and a physical therapist who worked in the gym.

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0:14:24 Jenessa: Like, this woman is rough. A video comes out of her obviously abusing Sabrina, her daughter who's at the Olympics. Um Sabrina falls off an apparatus and her mom is walking up to her and like no kid should ever flinch away from an adult like that especially not their own mother it's really bad disturbing at the next world championship sabrina is also accused of bullying and physically threatening her own teammates. It's just really bad. The environment in this one team is so negative. Sabrina is like covered in tape and braces by the final night. Like she looks like she's falling apart, like a ragdoll being held together on just like hopes and dreams that she's not gonna collapse by the end of this Olympics. So it's, it looks the way it used to look. Look, young teenagers who are not happy and are being pushed way too hard, doing difficult moves they're not prepared for and getting injured. Okay, here's what happens. Jordan goes up. Jordan Childs, who will that night get the bronze medal. She gets her score up on the board. It's a 13.666.

0:14:34 Thomas: Yeesh. Oh God. That's horrifying. Yeah. Yeah, which I assume is an average of like some judges scores kind of thing. Okay.

0:15:52 Jenessa: Exactly your execution score which is like that perfect 10 where you start losing points for every like ugly mess up you make they have a couple of judges do that score and they average them together to make it fair that's the execution score and then you add on to it a difficulty score which ist like on the floor it's your eight most difficult moves they get a certain number of points, put it all together.

0:16:17 Thomas: All right. So it'd be like, you can't just do easy stuff and then that way you do everything perfectly. There has to be some amount of like, if you try to do something harder, it's going to be accounted for.

0:16:27 Jenessa: Exactly, so the difficulty, you literally just have to like do it. If your feet hit before the rest of your body, you will get the difficulty points for the move. You will lose a ton of execution points for falling on your ass, but you're gonna, you'll get the difficulty points.

0:16:45 Thomas: Oh, gotcha. Okay, so I I can go out there and be like, I'm going to try to do a 1080 flip curl around, flip under my own ass, 40 feet in the air. And then I'm gonna land in a superhero pose like Iron Man. And then, I just go out and just, like, my pants fall down and I trip.

0:17:02 Thomas: I'm like, so, I got the difficulty points, right? Yeah.

0:17:02 Jenessa: As long as your feet hit first, you will get those points. So every once in a while we do end up with like slow -mo ass cam of did their feet hit before their butt. But if you're falling that bad, like you weren't going to win anyway in this elite level of competition, right? You got to land your moves. So there's execution. Did you do it pretty? You You start at a 10 and you can only go down from here. There's difficulty, how difficult were your top eight moves. And as long as you execute them to some minimum degree, you're going to get the points. And then there's these neutral deductions, penalties where like, oh, you could beautifully stick it and get the difficulty and lose no execution. But if you stuck it out of bounds, you are going to lose some points for a penalty for that. So you cannot challenge your execution score that it's just too at some point it's subjective we're going to be here all night we can't be doing this the difficulty and the neutral deductions you can submit an inquiry and that's saying hey I think you calculated my difficulty wrong or I strongly suspect that you didn't credit me for one of my moves like you underscored it I don't think that penalty should apply, blah, blah. And the judges will reconsider. They can go look at the slow -mo camera, whatever. Usually for tumbling, you either landed on your feet or you didn't, right? And if you didn'T, you might just be so injured you're not even in the competition anymore. But sometimes this will happen like with a turn. To do a full turn, you got to get 360 degrees around. If you fall short of that, they'll credit you for a half turn. You'll get some difficulty, just not all of it. Can somebody with the naked eye tell that you did 360 and not 359? No, of course not. So there's a little bit of subjectivity and that's where sometimes an inquiry will come in. And there's this one leap that every single person at this level is doing called a Gojian. It's named after the gymnast who did it first. It's basically you jump up, do a split leap and rotate one and a half times, 540 degrees. Degrees. If you under -rotate, you're going to get the Prodnova. Jump up, do a split leap, rotate 360 degrees. Like, you know, it's a C .3 instead of a D .4. And you figure, well, if I under-rotate it, I'm still going to give credit for something. Like what? It's not that bad, right? So a lot of people attempt it because on a really good night, you got the full 540 and 40 degrees, you get credit for this extra thing. You get an extra 10th. That's the difference between winning and losing, unless you're Simone Biles and then you're just like way ahead of everybody and who cares?

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0:19:53 Jenessa: Well, it's the last night. Jordan Childs has a Gojan in her routine. She hadn't been getting credit for it. She'd been getting downgraded to the not as good of a leap. And her coach goes, you know what? I think she pulled it off this time. I think they should have given her credit. She submits an inquiry and they win.

0:20:13 Thomas: Oh, well. Huh.

0:20:13 Jenessa: Jordan gets an extra 10th. Hooray. It's not unusual. People have been submitting inquiries through this entire Olympics. I know of at least three that happened that night.

0:20:24 Thomas: So, it's that just to make sure I have it. So, It's like, when do you do that? Right away? Or, like...

0:20:28 Jenessa: This is going to be the problem. So you are supposed to do it right away.

0:20:31 Thomas: Oh, right away.

0:20:34 Jenessa: They have changed this in the new court of points to prevent this problem from ever happening again. The old rules, the rules in 2024 were, if you get your score up on the board and you want to submit an inquiry about the difficulty or the penalty, you have to submit it before the next gymnast score goes up. So let's get this done. Submit quickly. Make a decision. Don't wait all day. If you are the last gymnast to go up, you Have one minute. That's less less than everybody else, because a floor routine lasts a minute and a half. So if you figure my score goes up, the other person gets ready, starts their routine, finishes their routine. The judges are still busy grading. You probably had about two minutes to get it done, roughly. And the last person gets one minute. And very specifically, the rules say one minute, they don't say 60 seconds. This might be legally important.

0:21:32 Thomas: Wow. That's interesting. How could there be a difference between one minute and 60 seconds? Was there a metric minute or something?

0:21:38 Jenessa: Um well it's generally legally like okay if I said you have 120 days or if I said you have four months those are different

0:21:48 Thomas: Well, sure. Yeah, but that's not 60 seconds in a minute, is it?

0:21:51 Jenessa: So like if I said 60 seconds like where are we gonna stop the timer at like milliseconds like we're not timing it to nanoseconds right so like in theory saying the words one minute does like imply a lack of precision on there? Like, does it have to be 60? Does it have to be, like, is 61 seconds too many? Is 60 .5 seconds too many? There is an obvious lack of precision being communicated here. If we were really being sticklers, that means you count to the minute mark, and hypothetically, one minute and 59 seconds is less than two minutes, and that should be enough, right? If we're really gonna nitpick it, in a legal sense the important part is that this conveys a sort of lack of seriousness really nobody had been taking this all that seriously if you look back at previous world competitions like people nobody's sitting there with a freaking stopwatch like people had submitted these way later than that and nobody really raised a fuss yeah

0:22:09 Thomas: Okay, I guess. Okay, so it's just about the precision. I see. Okay.

0:22:52 Thomas: Oh, okay. Oh okay, well that makes a difference. All right.

0:22:59 Jenessa: Yeah like in terms of like precedent nobody's been like excuse me that was 62 seconds like I don't know of any incident where that had happened It definitely had not been like enforced in a very uniform way or with any mechanism.

0:23:13 Thomas: Because you got to figure like most of the time, someone's going to pretty much just be like, oh, what challenge? And I don't know why this would come up much. Like, what would be the reason that someone would do it late?

0:23:18 Jenessa: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like it doesn't make a lot of sense that you would be like, oh, I'm going to sit here on my butt and wait for it. Like, no, you make it. The point is urge create some level of urgency. Right. Right. You have one minute to flag somebody down and say inquiry, inquiry. And then you have up to four minutes to actually submit like what I am inquiring about is the following.

0:23:34 Thomas: Yeah. So what happened in this case? What was the timing on this one? Did you get to that or no?

0:23:49 Jenessa: Oh, boy. Good thing question. So if it had been if Jordan had been anywhere else in the lineup, she would have had until the next person's score went up. She got her 13 .666. She wins her challenge. It goes to 13.766. That's enough for third place. Hooray, hooray. The problem is she was the last person to go up. So when her score initially goes up on the board as a 13 .666, Anna Barbosu of Romania, who has a 13.7, is jumping up and down on the floor with the Romanian flag draped around her shoulders thinking she's in third place and getting a bronze medal. So this inquiry becomes heartbreak and becomes like a big thing that goes on the television zoomed in on a crying teenager, you know? If it had happened in the middle of the competition, I don't know that anybody really would have noticed. Like, oh yeah, the scoreboard changed. There weren't even, all nine people weren't even up there yet.

0:24:55 Thomas: And I have to assume they're used to this because this is the, like, procedure, right?

0:24:59 Jenessa: People do inquiries all the time. They are successful sometimes. They're not successful other times. Like it would never have been this big a deal if not for the fact that for a decent period of time, this one gymnast really thought she had a medal. And like that sucks. There's no way that doesn't suck. Jordan Windsor inquiry. Okay, great. Here's what's gonna happen so between that happening and just being very heartbreaking and this other gymnast Sabrina that we talked about Sabrina had people thought of her as a favorite because announcers were like oh she has the second highest difficulty that was true on qualifying night by finals night her difficulty was tied with three other people like she was she was exhausted and she was not doing her hardest tumbling on the entire floor so her difficulty had gone down her execution had always been lower than other people like it's actually not so surprising that she ends up in fifth but it looks like a big upset oh my god she's in fifth how could that have happened she had the second highest difficulty she didn't she also got an out of bounds penalty where everybody is like slow -mo oh from some angles it looks the heel of her left foot did go out from some it It doesn't, I think the toe of her right foot is what touched the mat, whatever. She's pissed because if she didn't get that out of bounds, she would have been in third. So you've got two Romanian gymnasts who are pissed. One of them, right. Yes.

0:26:27 Thomas: Oh, wait, what? Oh, okay. But she didn't do the challenge -y thing or that didn't, that's just the other one? Okay. Or, well, that's just Jordan, I guess you're saying. And so Jordan's successful challenge, and she's American, right? Is that the other?

0:26:43 Jenessa: She's American. Jordan Childs is American.

0:26:44 Thomas: Okay, so her successful challenge meant that this other Romanian is not in third anymore.

0:26:48 Jenessa: Put her in third, right? So one Romanian goes from third to fourth. The other one goes from fourth to fifth and she would have been in third if she didn't get this out of bounds penalty she challenged her difficulty score and failed she did not challenge her out of bounds penalty so there's just all this hubbub about oh my god Sabrina would have in third if she had only not gotten this out of bounds that like you know debatable whether she should have and oh my god poor anna was up there so excited and now she's off and

0:27:21 Thomas: All right, but you got to assume, I mean, it's sports and it's challenges. They're in every sport now, pretty much. If she challenged it and they looked at it and said no, but you're seeing, oh, because she didn't challenge this other thing. Are you only allowed to challenge one thing or something? Oh, okay. Well, she didn't challenge it.

0:27:37 Jenessa: No you could have challenged both there's rules in the thing for yep

0:27:41 Thomas: Sounds like that's on her. Okay.

0:27:43 Jenessa: Yeah pretty much her coach claim her coach or mother claims she didn't know you could challenge those neutral deductions those penalties yeah it's it's in the rules in a different part of the rule book sorry everybody like yeah so I'm totally like yeah too bad so sad like sometimes you have to learn how to lose lose gracefully. Losing gracefully is not what is going to happen today.

0:27:48 Thomas: All right. Well too bad. That's sports. Yeah. Show

0:28:06 Jenessa: They're going to show up and try to appeal anything and everything. I don't want to blame the gymnasts.

0:28:10 Thomas: Up where?

0:28:12 Jenessa: They are going to go to the Court of Arbitration for Sports, which is where you would dispute stuff. You know, most of what they are handling is like doping and cheating. Not this. But the Romanian Gymnastics Federation is going show up and challenge this. I do not want to put too much on the gymnast because they were literal teenagers and I don't know how much they had control over what was happening here but the arbitration group is gonna say pretty quickly off the bat yes Sabrina did not challenge that out of bounds at the time she cannot come to us and try to challenge it now too late there's some other important rules um one country cannot appeal the scores of a gymnast from another country. So Romania cannot challenge Jordan's score. Just not fair or not right. You challenge your own score. That's different. You cannot appeal what's called a field of play decision. So it's kind of the idea that like if we let you appeal what judges and referees decide, again, we're going to open up the field to like a bazillion. We can't be doing this. We shouldn't substitute our judgment for the judgment of the literal experts who know

0:28:51 Thomas: Yeah, that seems right. Sure, right. Right. Yeah.

0:29:29 Jenessa: All the rules of the the sport and are trained in this. So what that's going to mean is nobody can appeal whether or not Jordan should or shouldn't have gotten credited for making the 540 degrees around on the leap. That was a field of play decision. What's done is done. Whether you agree with it or not, it's over.

0:29:49 Thomas: So why would that be challenged? I thought, or is that the thing she successfully challenged on that night yeah okay so you figure that right

0:29:53 Jenessa: She challenged it successfully that night with the judges. When you show up to this arbitration court first of all you are not from the united states you cannot petition her score because you're it's different countries that's already a rule second of all even if that wasn't true it's a field of play decision whether or not yes that's

0:30:01 Thomas: Right well and it was reviewed like I don't understand it seems like double you

0:30:20 Jenessa: Exactly right this field of play rule is saying it was already reviewed by the experts we're not the experts We're not going to do that. And they're going to say that would also apply to Sabrina's out of bounds. Even if whether it had been reviewed, whether you appealed it or not with the judges at the time, we, the Court of Arbitration for Sports, are not qualified to say what does and doesn't count is touching your toe on the mat out of bounds. Like, no, this is field of play decision. This is not for us.

0:30:27 Thomas: Know meanwhile alito comes in oh no you can do it you can just decide doesn't matter what other people who know better found at a lower court or whatever you just just say hey I found this paper from the the uk which I normally don't care about which said trans people something something so don't worry about it you can do

0:31:06 Jenessa: Yeah, what they are going to allow which is shocking for a lot of people honestly they end up saying okay after days of back and forth the romanian federation is going to amend their appeal and say we want to know exactly can you give us any evidence of when she submitted her inquiry because we don't think she submitted it on time and they will say go ahead yeah

0:31:31 Thomas: It oh well okay that's already weird because if you can't challenge another person's score why the hell could you challenge

0:31:39 Jenessa: Agreed it's weird to suggest it's a gymnast from another country and the decision to accept the challenge like to grant her challenge those are field of play but we're gonna allow oh you're not technically challenging her score you're challenging whether the judge followed the rule about the timing so we're gonna allow it we're going to hear it and already shocking that this is happening like it's over guys it's it's done like really we're to do this what they end up finding on a record that will get disputed according to the timing of we have like you can all the official equipment will have very precisely when her score went up on the scoreboard which is like your start time and from the time that the person who enters the inquiry in the computer the time they hit submit was one minute and four seconds.

0:31:51 Thomas: That you would think wow yeah yeah right but okay so that doesn't tell you how long did it take them to enter it in or to to relay that yeah so I mean that's so close that you'd be like well there's no no effing

0:33:00 Jenessa: And also, like, there's no way anybody in the moment that day correctly perceived that that was one -minute -four seconds and not 59 seconds. Like, nobody, this is grasping at straws. There's no Way anybody in that moment was like, I think she's late. Like, it

0:33:07 Thomas: Way yeah and it doesn't matter yeah and it's not a thing that's like matters it's not part of you know it's it's one thing where it's like okay when it comes to sports you know offsides and hockey you got to draw a line you got to try to make a rule and sometimes it seems like oh man it was so close but it's like yeah that's the nature of drawing lines and having review it's gonna have to be something like this this isn't even like you know a gymnastics thing be one thing if it was like her toe was over the line that's at least like a gymnastics thing. This is just like when a challenge happened that was close enough. This doesn't seem like good sporting. It's a bad sports thingy.

0:33:19 Jenessa: Doesn't. Yeah. Sure. No. This is the worst sportsmanship on earth. You're gonna try, like, how good do you feel about this metal around your neck if this is the reason that you get it, right? Like, this is, come on, this ist so dumb. Yeah, once your score flashes up, you have to get the score in in a minute verbally. Like, so what, is it from the time you start talking?

0:34:15 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:34:15 Jenessa: Is it from the time you stop talking? Is itfrom the time the guy types up there is an inquiry for the following gymnast on their difficulty score? Press enter. No! Exactly, that's not your fault if they take forever.

0:34:24 Thomas: Well, no way. It can't be that because you're not responsible for that. Yeah.

0:34:32 Jenessa: So, okay, it gets even wilder. They file a challenge the very next, this happens at night, they file it the very next morning.

0:34:40 Thomas: Wait, sorry. What happens at night?

0:34:41 Jenessa: Okay, the floor event final happens on August 5th in the afternoon or evening. August 6th, first thing in the morning, Paris time. The Romanian Gymnastics Federation files this complaint to the Court of Arbitration for sport. And they're going to decide we're going to have our ad hoc panel, which is like a panel of just three people, not the whole board. And we're going to get this done as quick as possible. We're going to try to finish this before the Olympics ends on the 11th. Like, oh, my God, this is so important that we decide this so quick. Instead of like the full board would have taken months to decide how they want to handle this.

0:35:19 Thomas: Oh, okay. I think I misunderstood. Did we jump weird in the time or did I misunderstand where we were? So when when did the when did the arbitration thing happen

0:35:26 Jenessa: We are going, this is their filing for the arbitration right now. All the challenges, yes, within minutes of your performance, you file your, with a judge, with, you know, that's not a legal thing. You just say, hey, judge, I disagree with you. The arbitration, the very next morning, Romania's like, hey here's my complaint. I think to the court of arbitration for sports, nobody associated with gymnastics.

0:35:33 Thomas: Okay right right after like that day so the challenges are like that night like when it happened right and then right right mm -hmm mm -hm right okay and when did they rule on that time thing we were talking

0:36:01 Jenessa: The timeline for them them is weird. So they are going to accept the complaint and they're going to start notifying people. Okay. I want to hear, you know, oh boy, we got to decide this quick for some reason. So we're going do our small panel. We're going try to decide before the Olympics is over on the 11th. Let's figure it out quick, quick, they start sending, you need to reply by this date and we need the international Olympic committee. We need the International Federation of Gymnastics to respond. We need the head judge to respond. And then they say, hey, has anyone heard from USA Gymnastics? Why are they not answering our emails? They haven't said shit and their gymnast is going to lose a medal.

0:36:43 Thomas: About huh geez to the wrong email oh my

0:36:43 Jenessa: They were sending it to the wrong email, swear to God. So days are going by and finally somebody is like, hello, and sends it to a different email. And at midnight Pacific time, God bless good lawyers. This lawyer gets the notification. I don't know if they were Eastern, it would have been 3 a.m. So somewhere in the U .S. between midnight and 3 a。m., this lawyer gets the notification and is like, I'm sorry, what is happening? You guys have been for days all corresponding with each other about how you think this should be arbitrated, and we don't even know this is happening.

0:37:14 Thomas: God right right right Right. So it's like they almost didn't serve proper notice, you know, of a court thing. Okay.

0:37:28 Jenessa: Precisely. On August 9th, midnight Pacific time, USA Gymnastics goes, what the hell are you talking about? At 5:45 a.m. Pacific time they submit a document. Somebody has been up all night and writes, oh my god, please, we need an extension. Like we didn't even know this was happening. You guys have had days to prepare your arguments and like we don't, we don'T, what is going on?

0:37:43 Thomas: Oh, wow. Yeah, I bet. Yeah. Well, yeah, if they sent it to the wrong frigging email, I'm sure they would have cared about what's going on.

0:37:58 Jenessa: Yeah. Yeah, they care a little bit, a little bit about this. The court of arbitration extends the deadline to 8 p.m. Pacific time, which is going to be, yeah, it's going to be like, no, it is even less than that. It is like five hours. Oh, yeah. So they submit this 8

0:38:10 Thomas: Something like 12 hours, something like that. 12, 15 hours. Oh really? Oh, PM? Cause I thought you said, oh, okay. Oh, when they did the decision.

0:38:22 Jenessa: p.m.

0:38:22 Thomas: Well here we go. We have another timing issue on when the

0:38:23 Jenessa: They say that they say

0:38:25 Thomas: Thing was submitted versus when they decided oh

0:38:29 Jenessa: 8 p.m. Paris time. You have to get back to us. That is 11 a.m. Pacific, and we are communicating with you at 6 a.m. Pacific.

0:38:31 Thomas: Wow yeah that's much quicker

0:38:39 Jenessa: And like, Jesus. They finally get it into them three minutes before the deadline. Here's the U .S.'s arguments for why you should not be doing this. This is 10 hours after they got noticed this was even happening. They submit their brief. And then the next day at 8:30 a.m. Paris time, this is 11:30 p.m., Pacific or 3:30 a.m. Eastern, they have a four-hour hearing about what's going to happen. It's been 22 hours since the U .S. even heard this was happening, and we are having a hearing. And that same day, the court of arbitration will say, yes, we think it is late, and Anna gets the bronze now.

0:39:25 Jenessa: Yeah. Yeah, it's really just absolutely shocking. This is the first time ever that an athlete has been stripped of their medal in Olympic history who was not doping or cheating.

0:39:23 Thomas: Holy crap that seems wild yeah if

0:39:41 Jenessa: They have always gone by a rule that basically, if you were, if the medal ceremony has already happened, you cheered, everybody cheered. You got the medal around your neck. Unless you were doping, cheating, lying, bribing, like it's yours.

0:39:48 Thomas: You're on the freaking podium yeah yeah right which that's happened I've seen some of those where they're like uh oh it turns out they were doping you now got the gold or whatever like that makes sense sure yeah but this wow

0:40:04 Jenessa: Oh yeah, they'll do that. So it just feels really shitty that it's like, oh, that's fun. The first ever all black podium, a black woman. We will break all precedent. And for the first time in Olympic history.

0:40:17 Thomas: On bad evidence they don't even have when she did the challenge. It sounds to me, unless they did something else, it sounds to me like they were basing it on when this timekeeper somebody entered something into something. That's insane.

0:40:30 Jenessa: They literally based it on the official timing says it was submitted in the computer by another person at one minute, four seconds.

0:40:39 Thomas: That is absolutely insane. What kind of corrupt nonsense is this?

0:40:43 Jenessa: Yeah, there is going to be an allegation of corruption. The head of that three person board was at the time representing Romania in a bunch of international like financial things. So that does feel a little iffy. There's also just a long history of racism in gymnastics that probably explains the International Gymnastics Federation not being more forceful in saying, like, this should not happen. Just don't, they don't object to the very idea of challenging this. They don't stand up and say, a medal has been awarded, can we all go home? Whereas like in 2004 there was a case where a judge fully admitted I made a mistake on somebody's difficulty score I'm so very sorry and the exact same court of arbitration granted you know many years earlier said hey um the gold has been awarded already to somebody else an american over a chinese person a white person over a Chinese person we're not changing it this was It was a field of play decision. Even if you tell me you screwed up in the field of play, we don't change the field of play.

0:41:59 Jenessa: Done. There's a bit of a logic that it wasn't the last event. So like, oh, maybe they would, you know, psychologically you might have compete. We don't know that it would have changed the result. Like, would you have competed differently on the last event if you knew you were behind by a tenth or whatever? But like, we have a precedent for, like, do not do this to people. Do not change the results no matter what. And here we are. It just felt really... I feel bad for Anna that she thought she won for two minutes, but, like...

0:42:35 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Comparatively. Yeah that's also you you didn't. This is, I mean, maybe it's because I've been a fan of sports that have had challenges for a long time.

0:42:36 Jenessa: Sorry. Yeah, like this is obviously... Yeah,

0:42:46 Thomas: There's plenty of times where it's like, you think you have a goal in hockey or you think have a touchdown and you don't or vice versa. Like that's just kind of how like we understand that's how it goes when you have challenges. It's a trade -off between, well, the other option is like, there's been these horrible calls throughout history where it's like everyone watching on TV can be like, that was awful. That shouldn't have been how the game ended and there's nothing they could do before the challenge system so I mean it's a trade -off and that's how it is oh

0:43:12 Jenessa: That's life. I'm sorry. Be a good sport, right? Now, granted, in the US, you do get some payment for winning an Olympic award. In Romania, you get a salary for life in a house or something. It's like the Hunger Games over there.

0:43:29 Thomas: Okay I mean yeah yeah

0:43:29 Jenessa: So there's a lot more stakes for some other countries. Countries but yeah it just was really rough and like yeah comparatively for jordan to be on there's a list of people who've had their metal stripped and every single one of them cheated and then there's jordan like yikes dude it's so bad so

0:43:54 Ad: [Ad break 4 — ad music]

0:43:55 Jenessa: They do the thing that almost nobody ever does they file an appeal of an arbitration decision already rare and almost all it goes to the Swiss Federal Court, that's who oversees the Court of Arbitration for Sports.

0:43:56 Thomas: That's that's insane huh wow how does that work yeah

0:44:11 Jenessa: I don't quite know why. It's, I don' know, Switzerland. I guess everybody just decided they're the neutral people. I donno. So that's where it goes when you appeal from the CAS. And I had to Google translate this decision out of, some of them are in French and some of the are in German. And normally I would never do that with a legal thing. Like I need the official translation. But I feel like once again, democracy not hanging in the balance was probably okay. The pronouns get screwed up a couple of times, but otherwise it was pretty good. I actually learned from a friend recently that Google Translate was largely trained on EU law because it's like a modern Rosetta Stone. It's got the same thing in multiple languages. So of all the things to use it for, a European Union legal decision was probably one of the best case studies. So the Swiss court, normally you would appeal to them and they would say, absolutely not. That was an arbitration decision. Like, you're stuck with it. They held on to this for over a year.

0:45:16 Jenessa: And the longer it went on, the more people were like, oh, I think Jordan's actually going to win this because that's weird for them to take so long. And what was really critical that changed everything, I swear to God, was Simone Biles' Netflix documentary.

0:45:22 Thomas: What

0:45:32 Jenessa: They were filming a documentary of Simone Biles's life during the Olympics, which means everyone on the floor was mic'd up and there were cameras everywhere because

0:45:32 Thomas: Wow how did that not come up sooner

0:45:45 Jenessa: USA Gymnastics had less than 24 hours to get their shit together.

0:45:49 Thomas: Right yeah fair enough fair enough Yeah.

0:45:51 Jenessa: So on August 10, they announce, congratulations, Anna of Romania. And on August 11, Jordan's lawyers are like, we need you to look at this video because what you have is Jordan's coach, who is mic'd up because she's also Simone's coach on audio going inquiry for Jordan, inquiry for Gordon, walking towards the thing and then saying, yes, inquiry for jordan at the 45 second mark like well within a minute and then she's she's off camera but you hear her she's back on camera coming towards jordan the guy flags her again and goes what are you petitioning and she goes the difficulty score and he goes okay and you see him typing it in at the 58 second

0:46:22 Thomas: My God. Come on. Yeah. Duh. Yeah,

0:46:43 Jenessa: Mark so even if it was when the guy starts typing is the real rule it's only if you wait until he stops typing hits enter and then the computer acknowledges that he hits enter that's the only way that you get she was late

0:46:45 Thomas: This is ridiculous. That's also just not how it works in any other sport. In football, there's times where they try to call a timeout. That can be important if it's like, oh, actually they called timeout before the play even started and they'll wipe out an entire play. It could be the game winning frigging play. But if they look back and they see that the coach tried to start calling a time out, like visibly was doing it toward the ref at right before the time, then they undo that entire play potentially. It's been a minute since I watched football. They could have adjusted those rules.

0:47:00 Jenessa: It's absolutely not oh

0:47:26 Thomas: But that's how it was, you know, three, four years ago when I watched baseball. And I assume it's still the same.

0:47:26 Jenessa: Yeah yeah yeah because it's not your fault that they didn't see

0:47:33 Thomas: If a ref didn't, yeah, like wasn't listening or was focused somewhere else. And it's already such a flimsy thing to begin with, with the timing and then it never being an issue before that anyone ever ever policed to that precision of time, you know, it's just, there, there's absolutely no reason that this should have been undone. It's just crazy to me. So then what happens?

0:47:35 Jenessa: You yeah yeah so the swiss court given this and given all the arguments and here's the rule obviously you got all your standing rules and all of that but the The thing that's going to be the most important to say, you're going to try to tell us to overturn an arbitration. Well, what the Swiss court is not going to do is make a decision about who gets medals in sports. What they will do is say, the arbitrators have to do this again. So we will reverse your decision. So we still don't know yet what's goingto happen, but we're pretty damn sure. What theywill say is, hey, court of arbitration for sports, you need to redo this. And there's two important things first of all hey wink wink reminder the burden of proof is on the complainant the burden was not on USA Gymnastics or Jordan Childs to prove she was on time everyone in the environment accepted she was On Time at the moment like the burden is on these people to prove to you I don't know what the exact like it's probably not beyond a reasonable doubt. But whatever the standard is, yeah, they really heavily criticize in here that they claimed it was conclusive evidence because of that computer timing. The International Gymnastics Federation couldn't even identify who was the person who typed in the inquiry. They were like, yeah, so that wasn't an official judge. So we don't know their name. So, we can't get them to testify in the hearing yeah and they based it on the I know oh my god it was infuriating I know it was absolutely infuriated and they said the conclusive testimony was that her coach said yeah I gave the inquiry and he entered it immediately my friend immediately does not mean in a nanosecond like there's obviously a time lag so tons of criticism for the international gymnastics federation for creating a timing rule and not then not creating any way to possibly enforce it or document it at all

0:48:42 Thomas: Yeah. That's just insane. Yeah. Obviously. Yeah, whatever their standard is. Yeah it's more than just like, uh, we're pretty sure.

0:49:24 Thomas: Oh wow. To even testify about it. Oh, wow. What a, what a con job. This This is the dumbest shit. I'd be so pissed. I don't even care about gymnastics. I'm pissed. I'm so mad about this. Yeah, yeah.

0:50:06 Thomas: I mean, sure. But also it's like if they accepted it, they accept like whoever accepted it on the field, accepted it like that day. You know, it's really more on any idiot who would undo this, like on no evidence.

0:50:12 Jenessa: It really is it's so

0:50:19 Thomas: Because it's just one of those things like there are a lot of things in sports where it makes sense that it's, like, you know, a matter of skill, a matter of knowledge. If it's like, hey, I think my score was wrong, you know that they're going to have said that right away. Like, there's no reason they wouldn't have said that right away, there is no reason for that to be part of the gamesmanship of it. They're always going tohave said thatright away. On any level, yeah. Yeah.

0:50:31 Jenessa: Dumb exactly exactly like it just doesn't make any sense top to bottom. No. And then what they'll say is, okay, when we will tell an arbitration board that they have to redo it, why would we ever do that? One of the reasons is a party may request a review of an award if it subsequently discovers relevant facts or conclusive evidence that it was unable to invoke in the previous proceedings despite having exercised due diligence. So they're going to heavily emphasize how unfair it was that they had less than 24 hours. Of course, what we would consider due diligence has to take into account the amount of time you had. Also take into accounts for some reason you did not go to the big arbitration board that would have taken months to do this. You decided this had to be figured out within days before the Olympics is over, the medal ceremony's already over. Like, why does it matter when people go home? Who cares? Whatever. The rule for discovery of conclusive evidence, you have to fulfill five conditions. Number one, the evidence has to relate to prior facts, of course. It must be conclusive, that is, capable of leading to a modification of the decision in a manner favorable So the fact that they're going to say this Netflix documentary is conclusive should probably tell us how the court of arbitration should lean here. Number three, the evidence has to have existed when the decision was rendered. So we're not going to tell an arbitration board, oh, new evidence came to light after you made your decision.

0:52:19 Thomas: That's interesting. Sure.

0:52:19 Jenessa: Go back. We could have. So what, 20 years later, we're goingto go back? No. No. If there was evidence that existed at the time you were reviewing that didn't come to light during the review, now it's different. Four, discovered only after the fact. Obviously, if you had the evidence and didn't present it, that's on you. And number five, you were unable to invoke the evidence despite having exercised due diligence.

0:52:49 Jenessa: So if the evidence already existed, but you didn't know about it because you were being lazy again that's on you so putting this all together they say okay they're kind of nodding at like you screwed up the burden of proof here and saying there was this evidence that existed the audio visual recording was made during the competition it was there it existed out there in the world despite everybody's due diligence within the 24, less than 24 hours they were given, they didn't have it in front of them. So they were stuck just going, yeah, I mean, I know the clock says a minute and four, but like, come on, man, as opposed to being able to give you this video. And we now say, yeah. We consider this video conclusive, capable of leading to modification of the decision. It should really make you reconsider. It's really silly, too. The Romanian Federation and opposing tries to say, well, actually, the evidence didn't exist at the time, because this is an audiovisual compilation. So the audio existed in the video existed, but not the two put together.

0:53:57 Jenessa: Guys, get the get out of here. Like, no, come on.

0:54:03 Thomas: That's very silly.

0:54:05 Jenessa: Again, just trying so hard to win a medal on a technicality that is like, all right, it's just No, man. Sabrina also appealed to the federal court and they were like, once again, we will not be reviewing whether or not you stepped out of bounds. You need to take a deep breath and go home like this is not happening. So it is going to go back to the Court of Arbitration for Sports. I have not seen a schedule for when. In theory, they could say, no, we're leaving it alone. I have seen proposals where people keep being like, just give them all a medal. And like, no, man, like, yeah,

0:54:41 Thomas: Undo the very bad thing that you did. And, but I worry though, because if they were willing to do that first bad thing, who knows if they'll do another bad thing.

0:54:50 Jenessa: Like to me, it would be very hypocritical to be like, well, no matter how sad it was going to make Jordan, you can't have two people win. So we're going to take it away from her. If we're gonna then turn around and be like well Anna would be be very sad if we take the medal away so you get to so okay so we can't make the white girl sad that doesn't feel right so I know like it's oh this is all the international gymnastics federation's fault they didn't have clear rules they didn'T have clear enforcement okay but you could just be a good sport and not challenge this like and you could just be good sport about yeah

0:55:22 Thomas: It's no, it's all the arbitration people's fault. That's a bad decision on so many levels. They did not have the proper evidence. They didn't have, like, they shouldn't have been doing that. They shouldn't have been ruling on that kind of thing. It was already already decided that. There's no sense in which they did the right thing.

0:55:38 Jenessa: They just should have said we don't have jurisdiction this is a field of play decision and just left it alone like go home and get over it everybody to try to be like oh because of the sheer technicality that like once you dug through every piece of evidence you could possibly dig through you found this thing that hypothetically could mean it was late now you feel entitled

0:56:03 Thomas: That's the thing. It would be even another thing if they for sure proved it was late. Even that would be like slightly better. You'd be like, okay. But they didn't even do that.

0:56:12 Jenessa: Yeah so like to feel entitled to a medal after all that is just I'm sorry, man. No. The whole thing is just not right. And what we definitely can't have is the record book says Jordan has a 13 .766, Anna has a 14 .7, and they both have a bronze medal and third place in the record books because, well, it would be sad if they didn't.

0:56:19 Thomas: Absolutely insane. Right? Screw that.

0:56:39 Jenessa: No, absolutely not.

0:56:40 Thomas: So that's where we are there. So it's been essentially remanded back to the asshole fifth circuit kind of thing.

0:56:46 Jenessa: Precisely. Yeah, basically, it's been remanded back to them with, Now you have to admit the Netflix documentary that has timestamps and audio visual, and you have to please keep in mind the burden of proof. And hypothetically, they could still be like, no, leaving it alone. We don't know when that's going to happen. The Swiss decision just came out.

0:56:50 Thomas: Back to Kaczmarek. That's what I'm worried about. Oh wow

0:57:12 Jenessa: So it's like, once again, a year and a half later, the gymnastics community has exploded talking about this yeah chaos absolute chaos

0:57:17 Thomas: Yeah yeah this is insane they better fix it this is nonsense I hate the stupid arbitration panel thingy that did this I don't even necessarily hate the romanians for trying to appeal it I hate those decision makers for yeah and their ability to eat depends on getting this uh yeah it's metal I don'T EVEN BLAME THEM I blame these decision makers who made a really stupid bad decision that was counter to sports in every sense of the word unsportsmanlike oh well this was seriously Seriously, this was like enrapturing and I'm so pissed, but thank you for taking us through that so adeptly. That was really fascinating. I'm sure you're going to tell me the minute there's a decision on this and I

0:57:26 Jenessa: Yeah me too man no I mean they're teenagers they're terrible coach yeah yeah yeah very very oh

0:57:58 Thomas: Will be wanting to know.

0:57:59 Jenessa: Yes yeah it's uh quite a drama and anytime you want to talk gymnastics I am always here

0:58:47 Thomas: We men are the only ones who can pommel horses.

0:58:50 Jenessa: Falling on the beam with testicles is a level of danger that no one would tolerate in the sport. Not 121. Oh f**k the cat alarm. Morty knows the difference between a minute and 59 seconds. Okay.