Gymnastics – Worldwide Sports News

December 30, 2024

Simone Biles, Jordan Chiles and Rebeca Andrade summed up the incredible spirit of the Olympics. Now, it’s been tainted

Arguments still rage about the decision to strip gymnast Chiles of her bronze medal. But one thing is clear: the Games’ organisers failed to live up to the event’s values

As Rebeca Andrade, Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles stood behind the podium at the medal ceremony for the Olympic women’s gymnastics floor exercise in Paris, the significance of the moment was clear to all. Their collective success marked the first time in history that three black gymnasts had won bronze, silver and gold at the Olympic Games. And after years of pushing the greatest gymnast of all time to the limit, Brazil’s Andrade had finally outperformed Biles.

In the frenetic moments between competition and ceremony, Chiles and Biles agreed that the special circumstances merited a statement. When Andrade stepped up with her arms aloft to collect the gold medal, the two Americans bowed down to the Brazilian. Andrade extended a hand to each gymnast in response. “Not only has she given Simone her flowers, but a lot of us in the United States our flowers as well,” said Chiles after the event, meaning flowers as a metaphor for recognition. “So giving it back is what makes it so beautiful. I felt like it was needed.”

December 22, 2024

Generation TikTok: how sportswomen set the bar higher than the men

Female athlete power on social media became ever more strident in 2024 – but the backlash also damaged careers and wellbeing

Lina Nielsen remembers the moment she had the idea. She was sitting around the Olympic Village in Paris with her sprinting teammates – and she was bored. “I said to Yemi Mary John: ‘I’m gonna make this TikTok’,” Nielsen recalls. She took herself to her bedroom, got out the flip phone each athlete had been given and typed into an Excel spreadsheet: “Where you at? Holla at me.”

Her five-second spoof of Kelly Rowland’s music-video texting fail took hardly longer than that to make. It also got 8m views. “It’s funny that the videos that do that best are the ones you don’t put any effort in,” says Nielsen with a laugh. She is still trying to make sense of the fact that her TikTok channel was the most popular of any British athlete at the Games, beating even the knit-tastic Tom Daley in second place. At the end of the Olympic fortnight her channels had been viewed by more than the Australian and German teams combined.

September 17, 2024

Jordan Chiles appeals to Swiss supreme court over stripping of Olympic bronze

Romanian athlete was awarded bronze over Chiles
IOC ordered American to return Olympic medal

Jordan Chiles is asking Switzerland’s supreme court to overturn a ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport that stripped the gymnast of a bronze medal in the floor exercise at the 2024 Olympics.

Chiles, with the support of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee and USA Gymnastics, filed the appeal on Monday.

September 11, 2024

Jordan Chiles says stripping of Olympic bronze took away ‘the person I am’

Romanian athlete was awarded bronze over Chiles
IOC ordered American to return Olympic medal

US gymnast Jordan Chiles has spoken about the emotional fallout after she was stripped of the bronze medal she won at this summer’s Paris Olympics.

“The biggest thing that was taken from me was, it was the recognition of who I was. Not just my sport, but the person I am,” she said, her voice breaking at times with emotion, during an appearance at the Forbes Power Women’s Summit on Wednesday.