The prime minister of Romania said he will not attend the Paris Olympics closing ceremony in protest of the gymnastics judges’ decision that allowed two gymnasts from his country to controversially miss medals during the women’s final.
U.S. gymnast Jordan Chiles won the bronze medal after appealing her score during the women’s floor final earlier this week. Before she made the appeal, two Romanian gymnasts, Ana Barbosu and Sabrina Voinea, were tied for third place, and Barbosu would have kept the bronze medal position.
Barbosu initially thought she’d won a medal in Monday’s floor final on the last day of gymnastics events. Chiles was the final competitor, and the initial score posted on the videoboard was lower than Barbosu’s, prompting the Romanian to grab her country’s flag and begin celebrating.
Moments later, it was announced that Chiles’s coaches had asked judges to review the difficulty component of her score. That led to a 0.1 boost, bumping Chiles to 13.766, or just ahead of Barbosu’s 13.700 score.
“At this point, we had nothing to lose, so I was like ‘We’re just going to try,” Team USA coach Cecile Landi told reporters of the review petition. “I honestly didn’t think it was going to happen but when I heard her scream, I turned around and was like ‘What?’”
Chiles told TeamUSA.com that she did not “even realize my coaches put in an inquiry” for her score. “When it came through, I was very proud of myself. It was my first event final and it’s my first event medal. That is crazy,” she said.
In his social media post, Ciolacu went a step further, claiming that the situation was similar to Romanians being overridden by the Soviet Union in previous Olympic Games.
“The fact that hundreds of millions of viewers from all over the world were, like us Romanians, effectively shocked by this terrible scene, shows that somewhere, in the system of organizing this competition, something is wrong,” he said. “I don’t want to argue with anyone today, but I just choose to protest with my gesture against a blatant injustice towards some Romanian women who have fully proven their worth.”
Romania was a longtime superpower in gymnastics, and this was the program’s return to the Olympics after a 12-year break.
Nadia Comaneci, a retired Romanian gymnast who won multiple Olympic gold medals, criticized the review that led to Chiles’s victory.
“I can’t believe we play with athletes mental health and emotions like this … let’s protect them,” the nine-time Olympic medalist wrote on X.
“We remind you that Sabrina Voinea was fined with a tenth for allegedly going in an acrobatic line with her heel outside the line. Video images and photos confirm this theory,” the letter said, according to a translation from Romanian.
The Epoch Times contacted the International Gymnastics Federation, which has not issued a public response to the claims.
