In her first public comments since being stripped of a bronze medal she seemingly deserved, Olympic gymnast Jordan Chiles said Wednesday she was still looking for “justice” and “peace.”
Chiles said at the Forbes Power Women’s Summit in New York City that the situation surrounding the controversial medal was a heavy emotional burden for her.
“The worst thing that was taken from me,” Chiles said, her voice choked with excitement, which made her pause for 14 seconds to compose herself, “was the realization of who I was, not just my sport, but the person I am.”
The 23-year-old Chilean said she has had to endure racist criticism online in the wake of the international conflict, often on her own.
“The way things are going, it’s not about the medal anymore, it’s about my peace and my justice,” she said at the conference. “It’s about the color of my skin. It’s about the fact that I felt like there weren’t a lot of people supporting me that I thought could support me.”
Chiles originally placed fifth on the floor exercise before coach Cecile Landi noticed that the judges had made an error in assessing the difficulty of an element of her routine.
After the scoring error was corrected, the Chileans jumped to third place and the bronze medal.
Romanian sports authorities protested loudly and on the last day of the Games, the International Olympic Committee announced that it would abide by the decision of an International Court of Arbitration for Sport that Landi had lodged his protest 64 seconds after the results were announced.
The time limit for such an action is one minute.
The bronze medal went to 18-year-old Romanian Ana Bărbosu.
Despite the setback, Chiles can still look back on a team gold medal in Paris and a bronze medal she won in Tokyo three years ago.
Chiles, whose father is black and whose mother is Latina, said she has been doing her best to deal with online hate since the controversy erupted.
“I am a two-time Olympic champion, I am a two-time Olympian, I am a world champion. I am all of that,” Chiles said.
“No matter what happens, these awards will always be with me and I will continue to shine as brightly as I do because the star will never fade.”
