Jordan Childs fought for an Olympic medal on the courts of Paris and will now continue her quest on the courts of Switzerland.
It took a challenge to the scoring by Chile's coaches to move up from fifth to third place at the end of the Paris Games, and Romania took the matter to the Centre for Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which overturned Chile's scores and stripped them of their medals.
Childs will now appeal to the Swiss Federal Supreme Court to prove that he is the true bronze medalist.
“Chilis is asking the Supreme Court to determine that the CAS decision was procedurally flawed for two reasons,” his lawyers said. said In a statement.
“Firstly, the CAS violated Mr Childs' fundamental 'right to expression of opinion' by refusing to consider video evidence showing that Mr Childs' investigation was timely submitted, which is in direct contradiction to the findings of the CAS decision.”
“Second, the entire CAS process was unfair because Chile was not properly informed that the chairman of the CAS committee that cancelled Chile's bronze medal and awarded it instead to a Romanian gymnast, Hamid G. Garavi, had a significant conflict of interest. Mr. Garavi had been a Romanian lawyer for nearly a decade and was actively representing Romania at the time of the CAS arbitration.
“Today's appeal is supported by the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC), which has filed a letter in support of Chile's appeal.”
In an interview at Forbes magazine's Power Women Summit, Childs claimed there was a racial component to the attempt to strip her of her medal.
“For me, everything that has happened has never happened because of a medal, it's happened because of the color of my skin,” Childs said emotionally.
“I felt like I had done everything to get to this point as an athlete and then had it all taken away.”
