Olympic gymnast’s heartbreak as celebrations turn to tears after judges' intervene

An Olympic gymnast was left in tears when she realised the medal she thought she'd won wasn't actually hers after judges controversially intervened in the scoring of the competition.

Monday (5 August) saw some of the best female gymnasts in the world take to their specialities, with the final for the balance beam and floor events taking place at Paris' Bercy Arena.

As expected, Simone Biles took centre stage in what ended up being a controversial day for the most decorated gymnast of all time when she failed to win gold in both events.

Biles was left disappointed after falling off the beam, which took her outside of the medal places altogether.

Her reaction was more wholesome when it came to the floor after she was pipped to gold by Brazil's Rebeca Andrade

But it was away from the final podium that controversy erupted when it came to the floor routine, with the initial final results causing elation followed by almost immediate heartbreak.

After every athlete had performed, gold went to Andrade and silver to Biles.

Bronze had then initially been awarded to 18-year-old Romanian prodigy Ana Barbosu, with fourth place to her compatriot Sabrina Voinea, aged just 17.

Jordan Chiles, from Team USA, placed in fifth.

Footage from the Games shows Barbosu celebrating bronze, cheering and waving around a Romanian flag. But her mood flips 180 as she looks to the scoreboard with a look of desperation on her face.

Barbosu then drops her native flag and holds her stomach, before crying on the shoulder of a member of the Romanian camp.

It turns out the USA team had lodged an appeal with the judges of the floor exercise concerning the final score of Chiles.

Chiles' score of 13.666 put her in fifth, which the United States believed to be wrong.

The review found that the difficult of her routine had not been scored highly enough, moving it from a 5.8 to a 5.9.

This dramatically moved Chiles from 0.34 behind the two Romanians to ahead of them both by 0.066 points - securing her the bronze medal.

Speaking to local press after the competition, Voinea - who placed fifth after the change - was critical of Chiles.

She said: "Simone Biles is a good athlete but the American in third place, Jordan Chiles, made low landings and even left carpet.

"I was not penalised, I filed appeal and it remained same mark. Chiles kept protesting and changed her mark. I had a much better exercise than her."

Fans were split over the outcome. One said: "Jordan Chiles' coaches put in an inquiry to the judges because they incorrectly calculated her start value.

"They corrected the error, and she wins the bronze. Stoked for Jordan and simultaneously sad for Romania's Ana Barbosu."

Gymnastics blog, The Medal Count, wrote on X: "Ana Barbosu is the classiest gymnast who has supported other gymnasts every time she finishes fourth with positivity.

"She sees a third on the scoreboard and it is later dropped to fourth. Such devastated crying is something that NEVER happens with this gymnast. Just awful."

But another said: "Boy, imagine if Ana Barbosu were from USA. She would've secured that bronze. Romania's team getting robbed, I don't even care."

One Romanian X account wrote: "Jordan Chiles, you probably won’t see this. I know you worked hard too, but the only reason you got that medal is because your coaches used their influence to cheat."

There is, of course, no evidence of any cheating or foul play.

As for Chiles, she was overwhelmed at the change in the final result, with her hugging teammate Biles while crying tears of joy after securing bronze.