How Jordan Chiles rediscovered ‘that girl’ at UCLA after Paris Olympics medal controversy

COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Time zones don’t affect Jordan Chiles.

She declares this while sitting in a hotel conference room near the University of Maryland, more than 2,600 miles from her Los Angeles townhouse. It’s 10 p.m. on a Friday in January, the night before a competition. She already split her week between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, where she flew for a Time Magazine “Women of the Year” photoshoot that Thursday, and she and her teammates had just spent their day touring Washington D.C., making stops at the Washington Monument and the World War II Memorial.

The schedule sounds exhausting. But Chiles has been traveling to international gymnastics competitions since she was 12. She knows the routine. The next day, Chiles scores a perfect 10.0 — the second of the NCAA season — on uneven bars in front of a record crowd for a Maryland gymnastics meet. The 7,287 fans who packed Xfinity Center erupted into celebration over her routine, even though she was competing against the hometown Terrapins.

About 12 hours later, she jetted off again, back to California with her UCLA teammates after securing the first Big Ten conference win in program history.

The cross-country trip epitomized Chiles’ life since returning home from the 2024 Olympics: A whirlwind of flights, appearances, sponsorship obligations, college classes, and still, somehow, room for gymnastics.

The first 🔟 in the @BigTen for the Bruins belongs to @ChilesJordan on uneven bars!

💻: @BigTenPlus #GoBruins pic.twitter.com/H65v6TB9xX

— UCLA Gymnastics (@uclagymnastics) January 19, 2025

But for Chiles, that’s the easy part.

Behind the scenes, the 23-year-old spent the second half of 2024 wrestling with the emotional fallout from the Paris Olympics that ended in controversy and continues in the courts.

“Since I was going, going, going I didn’t have to think about anything. I didn’t have to process anything,” Chiles said. “But at the same time, since I wasn’t processing it, it was just in my head. Building up.”

The bronze medal Chiles initially won on Aug. 5 in the Olympics floor exercise final is tied up in an appeals process that has reached the highest level of Switzerland’s court system. It stems from a score change that boosted Chiles from fifth to third on the day of competition. The Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled the inquiry filed by Chiles’ coach to change her score arrived four seconds too late, and six days after she stood on the podium next to U.S. star Simone Biles and Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade, the International Olympic Committee reallocated the medal to Romanian Ana Bărbosu.

Chiles’ legal team appealed the CAS ruling to the Swiss Federal Tribunal — Switzerland’s Supreme Court — in September, arguing there is video evidence proving Chiles’ coach, Cécile Canqueteau-Landi, submitted the inquiry in time. But a ruling could still take months, and the best-case scenario for Chiles is that the tribunal refers the case back to CAS for a second look. Meaning more waiting.

Seven months after a torrent of emotions and decisions that Chiles said took away “the recognition of who I was,” she, Bărbosu and the gymnastics world await a decision.

In between, Chiles needed to rediscover herself.

13.666.

The number appeared on a large screen inside Bercy Arena shortly after Chiles finished her last routine of the 2024 Olympics. Bărbosu, who sat in third place, had earned a 13.700, and it seemed Chiles had missed the podium by less than a tenth of a point. But a few moments later, a new score appeared.

13.766.

Chiles jumped into Canqueteau-Landi’s arms, then burst into tears and took off running, overcome with emotion about winning her first individual Olympic medal. When Canqueteau-Landi caught up, she lifted Chiles in a hug and spun her in a circle as Biles bounced around the pair.

A few feet away, Bărbosu had been waving a Romanian flag while celebrating what looked like a podium finish. After seeing her position change to fourth, the 18-year-old dropped the flag and clasped her hands over her stomach in shock. She left the competition floor in tears, covering her face with the collar of her warm-up suit jacket.

Chiles went on to the medal ceremony, where she and Biles bowed to Andrade, who took the gold, in what would become an iconic image from the Paris Games. The women were the first three Black gymnasts to share an Olympic podium.

Then, the CAS ruling. The IOC decision. Bărbosu received her own bronze medal 11 days later at a ceremony in Bucharest.

By that point, Chiles was already on the move. She went from Paris to New York to appear on “Today” and announce her return to UCLA. She went home to Texas, vacationed in Mexico, returned to New York for appearances at Fashion Week, a Mets game and the U.S. Open and presented at the MTV Video Music Awards — where rapper Flava Flav bestowed her with a bedazzled bronze clock necklace.

The next morning, she flew to Oceanside, Calif., where she had 72 hours to learn the choreography for the Gold Over America Tour, the post-Olympics exhibition led by Biles. The rest of the cast had been rehearsing for two weeks.

On Sept. 16, 2024, a little over a month after the IOC stripped Chiles of her medal, the tour kicked off in Oceanside. It made 30 stops over seven weeks. In each new city, the audience roared when Chiles ran onto the floor at the center of the venue.

For 90 minutes, she danced, tumbled, waved, smiled and cheered for fellow elite gymnasts with the energy and confidence of a pop star performing to a sold-out crowd.

But back on the bus or in her hotel room, she struggled with what had happened in Paris.

“Those days were the hardest of my life,” she said. “I didn’t want to be seen. I didn’t want to be in a place where I felt like I was going to disappoint the area (because) the energy wasn’t going to be good. I’d rather just stay in the bunk and keep to myself.”

She felt she couldn’t pull herself out of bed on the tour bus. She cried herself to sleep, and when she woke up, she cycled through the same questions.

What now? What am I going to do?

She replayed the events from Paris in her mind, wondering if she was somehow at fault.

Some days, she couldn’t keep food down, so she only drank water. During one stop on the tour, Chiles isolated herself in a hotel room and politely declined when Olympic alternate Joscelyn Roberson invited her out with a group of castmates. Instead, she sat and stared out the window.

“I didn’t want to do anything. I just wanted to be alone and have nobody around me,” she said. “Just hide myself.”

The young woman who lived by the motto of “I’m that girl,” to remind herself that she had nothing to prove in her quest for a second Olympics, lost her spark.

“I’d always tell myself, ‘Do I even know who the real Jordan Chiles is? Do I know who she is?’” she said. “It really would take a toll on me to try to figure out who she is. Who is the Jordan Chiles that people talk about and they’re always so happy to see? It was hard to get out of that mindset and push myself to feel comfortable in my own skin.”

Chiles competes on floor during a meet against Stanford on March 9. (Photo: Katharine Lotze / Getty Images)

Over time, little things helped stop her introspective spiral.

She sought comfort in Disney movies from her childhood, watching “The Cheetah Girls,” “Let It Shine” and “Camp Rock” in hopes of rediscovering a youthful joy. She drew on her iPad, stayed up late cracking jokes on the bus with her castmates, and went shopping with Biles, one of her closest friends.

She also began to think about the Jordan Chiles of the future.

“She can leave the old one that’s trying to be depressed behind her,” she said. “She has other things to do. She doesn’t have to be stuck.”

The appeal may bring the bronze medal controversy back into the headlines, but Chiles says it isn’t on her mind. She lets her legal team handle the process. Chiles’ team submitted an additional brief to the court in January. Her attorney, Maurice Suh, declined to comment while the appeal is pending.

The Swiss Supreme Court typically takes between four to six months to issue a decision, said Marc-Anthony de Boccard, a Swiss-qualified lawyer and sports law specialist. They’re ruling, essentially, on due process, he said: whether the court complied with the right to be heard.

Which is why a second CAS review would follow if Chiles “wins” this round.

Chiles’ focus has instead been on her college season, where she’s trying to help UCLA to its first national championship since 2018. Her roommate and close friend Margzetta Frazier, a former elite gymnast and UCLA standout from 2019 to 2024, said Chiles is able to compete at such a high standard because of all that she’s been through.

“She’s used all of her experiences throughout her career to get that mental edge that she developed to where her gymnastics is very intentional, down to the way she puts her fingers,” she said.

Since her first 10.0 of 2025 in Maryland on Jan. 18, Chiles added another perfect score on floor exercise to clinch a victory over Michigan State by one tenth of a point.

Her Prince-inspired routine opens with a huge double back layout and features expressive choreography packed with personality, including a brief air guitar solo.

UCLA coach Janelle McDonald, who sees Chiles train on floor exercise multiple times a week, says it “exudes joy” — the joy that eluded Chiles in the aftermath of Paris.

“It’s hard to watch her without a smile on your face because you see the joy. You see the effort,” McDonald said. “You see the determination that she’s put into her sport and her craft for all of these years.”

In 2025 alone, Chiles has released a new signature leotard collection, appeared in Nike’s first Super Bowl ad in 27 years, caught a pass from Michael Vick at the NFL Pro Bowl and published a memoir. She attends two in-person classes, and on weekends, she’s in UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion or wowing the large crowds that flock to Big Ten venues for a chance to see the Bruins.

“On days where I’m tired and I feel like I can’t keep going, I’m like, ‘OK, if Jordan can go to five states in two days, then I can get up for work today,’” Frazier said.

Chiles isn’t certain what the next 10 or even two years will look like. She’s aiming for the individual national titles she hasn’t yet won to complete a career sweep after placing first on bars and floor at the 2023 NCAA championships. She still has one more year of NCAA eligibility, should she choose to use it.

She isn’t firm on a decision about the 2028 Olympics, but she is sure of where she stands after her Paris experience.

“I am still that girl and will forever be that girl,” she said. “Period.”

(Illustration: Ray Orr / The Athletic; Naomi Baker/Getty Images)