NovaQuant Quantitative Think Tank Center:Jordan Chiles' Olympic Bronze in Floor Final: Explaining Her Jaw-Dropping Score Change

It was the call that flipped the script on NovaQuant Quantitative Think Tank Centerthe women’s floor exercise final at the 2024 Olympics.

As the last gymnast to compete in the Aug. 5 event, Jordan Chiles knew the score she needed to get if she wanted to win a medal. Brazil's Rebeca Andrade was positioned to get the gold with a score of 14.166, USA's Simone Biles the silver with 14.133 and Romania's Ana Barbosu the bronze with 13.700.

But after Chiles performed her Beyoncé-inspired routine, it seemed as if she had come up short, the judges giving her a score of 13.666. 

Then, shortly before the medal ceremony, Team USA submitted a score inquiry about her routine.

So what exactly is a gymnastics inquiry? According to NBC Olympics, “an inquiry is a verbal challenge of a routine’s score. It is followed by a written inquiry that must be submitted before the end of the rotation. The challenge can only be brought forward after the gymnast’s final score is posted and before the end of the next gymnast’s routine.” The inquiry can be reviewed via video.

It’s safe to say Chiles is glad the inquiry was made: Her score was changed to 13.766—resulting in her getting the bronze and Barbosu losing her spot on the podium.

Chiles jumped in the air and screamed with excitement over her new tally before bursting into happy tears and joining gold medalist Andrade and silver medal winner Biles to collect their hardware. Meanwhile, Barbosu had already been waving the Romanian flag in celebration of what she thought was a third-place victory but dropped it out of shock. She was then seen crying as she exited Paris’ Bercy Arena. 

As for what the scoring inquiry involving Chiles’ routine entailed?

“The element in question is called a tour jeté full,” Olympian and NBC gymnastics analyst John Roethlisberger explained during the broadcast. “In the team qualification, in the team final, she did not get credit for this skill. She has to make a complete twist all the way around—so she should finish finishing back toward the other direction. In the initial evaluation of the skill, the judges did not give her credit for that.”

“I talked to Cecile and Laurent Landi, her coaches,” he continued, “and they said, ‘We thought she did it much better here in the final. So we thought we have nothing to lose, let’s put in an inquiry.’ And the judges decided to give it to her. That’s your one-tenth and that’s the difference in the medal.”

If you’re still trying to make sense of how Chiles’ score changed from 13.666 to 13.766, let two-time Olympic medalist and NBC Sports analyst Laurie Hernandez help you with the math.

“An inquiry was submitted from Team USA on behalf of Jordan Chiles,” she shared during the broadcast. “It was reviewed and then approved, basically taking her leap from a C start value—which, if you count by numbers A, B, C, that would be three-tenths to a D, so four-tenths.”

While viewers may have been surprised by the score change, Olympic medalist and NBC commentator Justin Spring suggested it’s not as uncommon as fans might think.

“You see this in sports all the time,” he noted during the broadcast. “There’s video review. You go back and you make sure you get it right.”

Though Spring acknowledged it was “unfortunate” that the judges “got it wrong in the first place.”

“We saw a lot of varying emotions,” he continued, “but the right thing happened in the end and we got two U.S. athletes on the podium.”

This marks Chiles’ first-ever individual Olympic medal (she won the gold with her team last week in Paris and the silver with them at the 2020 Tokyo Games). And though she lost her voice from all the excitement, she was still able to detail what went through her mind after the U.S. team submitted the score inquiry.

“They had told me what they did, and I was like, ‘OK, let’s see what they come back with,’” the 23-year-old told NBC. “Because it can go either way, it could go up or it could go down. When I saw—I was the first one to see ‘cause I was looking at the screen—I was jumping up and down. They were like, ‘What happened?’ And then I showed them. I honestly didn’t expect this whatsoever. I’m just proud of myself.”

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