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.”
This was an extraordinary demonstration of sportsmanship in a Games where athletes competed with sincerity and respect throughout. Even as they tackled challenges for which they had spent their lives training, many of them still put their humanity first.
During the medal ceremony for the table tennis mixed doubles, the South Korean, North Korean and Chinese medallists, initiated by Lim Jong-hoon of South Korea, did not hesitate to pose for a selfie that defied closed borders. Moments after Great Britain’s Alex Yee had flitted past him in the final stages of the men’s triathlon to win gold, Hayden Wilde of New Zealand put an arm around his opponent as he offered his congratulations. When Angola’s Albertina Kassoma badly injured her knee during a handball match, it was a rival, Brazil’s Tamires Araújo Frossard, who carried her off the court.
As the Olympics unfolded, the acts of sportsmanship in the arenas seemed to reflect the host city. Paris had never felt so tranquil and wholesome, the scepticism about the event days before the opening ceremony quickly dissipating as the city united in the spectacle and the emotions. While sporting events often bring out the worst in opposing fans, supporters from around the world warmly received each other for three weeks.
Still, the Olympic bubble felt artificial – a welcome escape from real life, but also a distraction at a time when it seemed as if the world was falling apart. As the Games continued in Paris, far-right thugs rioted in England and Northern Ireland, attacking ethnic minority people, targeting their businesses and inflicting terror, their rampage mirroring the rise of the far-right elsewhere.
As the few Palestinian athletes present used their platforms to spotlight others’ suffering, Israel’s airstrikes and ground incursion in Gaza continued. The International Olympic Committee affirmed its neutrality, presenting the Games as if it exists in a geopolitical void.
The organisers of Paris 2024 were not beyond reproach, either. Instead of using the Olympics as an opportunity to develop better conditions for the most vulnerable, the authorities swept thousands of homeless people out of view and detached them from their support networks.
Even the gesture of gymnastics sportsmanship between Andrade, Biles and Chiles has been tainted. Chiles won her bronze – her first individual Olympic medal – after a dramatic climax in the floor final, with her score initially placing her fifth, behind two Romanian gymnasts, Ana Bărbosu and Sabrina Voinea, before her coach lodged an inquiry. After the review, Chiles’s difficulty score was increased by 0.1, moving her into third place.
Days later, after the Romanian Gymnastics Federation (FRG) contested the result, the court of arbitration for sport concluded that Chiles’ inquiry had been logged four seconds outside the time limit of one minute. USA Gymnastics says the inquiry was lodged in good time; arguments still rage over numerous judging decisions in the final. The FRG and USA Gymnastics were happy to share the bronze, but the IOC stripped Chiles of the medal and awarded it to Bărbosu.
That decision (for which USA Gymnastics has submitted an appeal to the Swiss supreme court), and the mess that has followed the floor exercise medal ceremony, seems like a perfect representation of the 2024 Olympics. So many athletes delivered their performances under suffocating pressure – and inspired with their thoughtful, sporting gestures throughout – but the organisers and structures of the Games failed to live up to the values it promotes.
