New Audio Evidence In The Jordan Chiles Bronze Medal Saga Confirms That This Whole Thing Is Getting Ridiculous

The Jordan Chiles bronze medal saga is a long way from being over and new audio evidence in the gymnast's latest appeal serves two purposes: it bolsters her case and highlights just how ridiculous this whole situation is in the first place.

The Olympics have been over for weeks, and the battle for Chiles' bronze in the floor exercise competition — which was stripped days after the competition — is still raging. As a Team USA guy through and through, I want to see her get that bad boy back because I want us to run the medal count score up on everyone.

The crux of the issue here is that following Chiles' performance, her coach, Cecile Landi, correctly realized her difficulty score was a bit too low. So, she filed an appeal with the judge, who agreed and added 0.1 of a point to Chiles' score, which put her in the bronze medal position.

Romania — arguing on behalf of the current bronze medal holder Ana Bǎrbosu — claimed that the appeal had not been made within one minute as per the rules.

Well, that seems pretty cut and dry, doesn't it?

Not quite. 

The Jordan Chiles bronze medal saga appears to be far from over, especially after new audio evidence supporting her case was introduced. (Photo by Naomi Baker/Getty Images)

According to Yahoo Sports, Chiles is appealing the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) decision that cost her a medal by going to the Swiss Supreme Court. She also comes with new evidence: audio recorded for a documentary about her teammate Simone Biles happened to pick up Landi asking for the appeal well within the one-minute window. 

However, it was not officially logged until 15 seconds after Landi's original request, which meant it was 7 seconds over the time limit.

Here's why this is so ridiculous: how does gymnastics not have a rule in place for what is official? No one seems to know, is it when it's officially logged or when the team asks for it?

A gymnast shouldn't be punished because the judge was dragging ass and didn't get the appeal logged until it was too late.

Sports is full of rule debates like this, and I hate to tell the gymnastics folks to get it together when I watch a couple of hours of gymnastics every four years, but c'mon, folks. They need to get this one ironed out.

Is it the official logging or when they ask for an appeal?

You've got about 46 months to get this sorted out before the next Olympics.