So, picture what happened during the floor exercise portion of the women’s gymnastics competition at the Paris Olympics.
American Jordan Chiles finished her floor routine and got the score of 13.666, which was just a third of a tenth ahead of the score awarded to two Romanian gymnasts, Sabrina Maneca-Voiena and Ana Barbosu.
Upon learning of the score, Cecile Landi, the U.S. coach, asked the judges to review the degree of difficulty for one of the elements in Chiles’ floor routine. After a few minutes, Chiles’ score was bumped up a tenth of a point, giving her the bronze and not the Barbosu, whose routine had the higher degree of difficulty in a rating system slightly less complicated than calculating an NFL quarterback rating.
Last Saturday, however, a special three-person panel ruled for Barbosu, saying that Landi’s appeal to the judges came four seconds too late.
But yesterday, it came out that the head of the special panel had represented Romania in a number of sports arbitration instances, according to documents viewed by The New York Times.
The official, Hamid G. Gharavi, is a French-based lawyer. He serves as legal counsel for the Romanian government in front of the Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes at the World Bank. According to the Times, Gharavi’s work dates back almost a decade.
A statement penned by three arbitration experts, published on the website of The International Institute for Conflict Resolution and Prevention, states the question neatly.
“The issue is whether an Olympic arbitrator who currently represents a country on the global stage can decide a case involving a gymnast of that country, in an unbiased manner. Is it realistic to expect such arbitrator can decide against the interests of that country or of that country’s gymnast, who in this case is represented by the Federation of Romanian Gymnasts?”
The conflict of interest is clear.
Yet, the scoring system used to judge the gymnasts is as unclear as the proceedings of the panel, which are held behind closed doors and are seemingly accountable to no one.
And that’s the real shame of it.
