Jordan Chiles, the U.S. Olympic gymnast, has now spoken out on whether racism factored into the stripping of her bronze medal from the 2024 Paris Olympics.

In August 2024 during the women’s floor exercise final, Chiles originally placed fifth with a score of 13.666. Afterwards, her coach triggered an inquiry into the difficulty score of her routine. That inquiry was accepted, her score was increased by 0.10 to 13.766, and she was awarded the bronze medal—moving ahead of Romania’s Ana Barbosu, who had posted 13.700.

But the story didn’t end there: The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) determined the inquiry had been submitted four seconds beyond the one-minute deadline allowed by the rules of the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG). Thus, the score change was invalidated, Chiles was moved back to fifth place, and the bronze medal was reallocated to Barbosu. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) ordered her to return the medal.

In a podcast interview on Baby, This Is Keke Palmer, Chiles addressed whether she felt racism played a role. She said initially she hadn’t thought of it that way, “until I started almost literally getting racist comments … telling me to kill myself … it got to a really, really tough point.”

Chiles also invoked the historic significance of the podium moment: her bronze had been part of a rare all-Black women’s podium alongside her teammate Simone Biles and Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade—and she said of that moment, “It’s obviously something that people don’t like… As a woman of color, I started seeing it more. They didn’t want to see that three beautiful Black women standing on that podium. They didn’t want to see the fact that we were just dominating. And I really took that to heart.”

She added that the social media backlash was so intense she “had to get off of social media for a while. Because … it was really hard to even see that, as an athlete…”

Chiles, backed by USA Gymnastics, contends that the inquiry was indeed filed within the 60-second deadline and has submitted time-stamped video evidence showing her coach’s request at 47 and 55 seconds after the score was posted.  But CAS has held that its rules preclude reconsidering its decision even when new evidence is presented. Chiles has also filed an appeal with the Swiss Federal Supreme Court, arguing procedural unfairness (including the presence of a CAS panel member who had represented Romania in prior proceedings) and lack of proper opportunity to respond.

The dispute prompted criticism of the judging process. CAS stated that if the FIG had better mechanisms in place, “a great deal of heartache would have been avoided.”  Meanwhile, USA Gymnastics expressed deep disappointment and insisted it will pursue “every possible avenue and appeal process… to ensure the just scoring, placement and medal award for Jordan.”