If Jordan Chiles gets to keep her Olympic bronze medal, she might have teammate Simone Biles and her Netflix documentary – to thank.
Court documents released Monday reveal that the video footage at the center of Chiles’ appeal efforts was provided by director Katie Walsh and production company Religion of Sports, who received special permission to film in Bercy Arena as part of Biles’ latest documentary project, “Simone Biles: Rising.” The first two episodes of the docuseries were released prior to the 2024 Paris Olympics and two more are still to come later this year.
The footage could prove to be the proverbial smoking gun in Chiles’ fight to hold onto her bronze medal, because it undercuts a key factual finding in the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s ruling – showing that the American gymnast’s appeal of her score, known as an inquiry, had been submitted well before the 60-second deadline.
“Inquiry for Jordan!” Chiles’ coach, Cecile Landi, is heard saying on the documentary footage precisely 49 seconds after Chiles’ score in the floor exercise final was announced. She also repeats “inquiry for Jordan” and “for Jordan” prior to the 60-second deadline.
The CAS ruling appeared to hinge on the timing of that inquiry, which placed Chiles ahead of two Romanian gymnasts and earned her a bronze medal. The inquiry was accepted in the moment, but the Romanian Gymnastics Federation later argued that it had been submitted four seconds too late and should be nullified. CAS agreed, issuing a ruling that effectively dropped Chiles back to fifth and elevated Romania’s Ana Barbosu into bronze medal position.
One day after CAS’ ruling, however, USA Gymnastics announced that it had received new video evidence that would prove Chiles’ inquiry had been submitted on time by Landi, who is both Chiles’ personal coach and was the coach of the U.S. team in Paris. It sent the video to CAS but declined to publicly reveal any details about the footage or its source.
CAS rejected the video, saying it couldn’t be submitted after its decision had been issued. Then, on Monday, Chiles formally appealed the CAS ruling to the Swiss Federal Tribunal. The documents submitted by her attorneys not only disclose the source of the new video footage, which spans nearly 7 minutes, they even include a hyperlink to it. Chiles’ attorneys also argued that CAS erred in not accepting the video.
According to the documents, Chiles’ team learned of the footage when Walsh, the docuseries’ director, texted Landi a message of condolences about the situation.
We aren’t letting this go so easily and will keep looking for video and stuff,” Landi replied. Landi then realized that Walsh’s team might have additional video and audio beyond what had already been published by NBC and the Olympic Broadcasting Services, a subsidiary of the International Olympic Committee that distributes footage of competition to media outlets around the world.
According to the documents, Walsh’s team had three cameras positioned in Bercy Arena as well as access to audio from Landi, who coaches both Biles and Chiles and was wearing a microphone for the documentary. At Landi’s request, Walsh passed along the footage to the coach and then later to the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and USA Gymnastics. Landi also passed it along to Chiles’ mother, Gina.
