Olympic Gymnastics Qualifiers Explained: Why Jordan Chiles won't compete in the individual all-around final despite fourth-place score

Jordan Chiles missed out on qualifying for the 2021 Olympic individual all-around final. She was hoping to achieve that goal in 2024.

She fell just one point short of earning the honor.

Chiles and teammate Suni Lee were in a tight battle to compete for the U.S. in the individual all-around final, with Lee beating Chiles by 0.067 points, relegating Chiles to top reserve territory.

Of course, it's worth noting that Chiles had the highest all-around score ever recorded in Paris, so some may wonder why she's not in the final with Biles and Li.

It's all due to rules aimed at balancing the competition within Olympic gymnastics.

Read more: Updated men's and women's gymnastics qualifying results, scores and winners

Why is Jordan Chiles not competing in the individual all-around final?

Chile will not be able to compete in the individual all-around final at the 2024 Olympics due to a limit of two athletes per country.

The rules are pretty simple: no country can send more than two athletes to the finals of any of the five events (the all-around and four events (vault, floor, horizontal bar, and balance beam)). So if an athlete from their country has two athletes higher than them on the standings, they can't advance to an individual event final, no matter how high they rank in the field.

That's exactly what happened to Chiles. She was third in the overall standings after the Subdivision 2 qualifying round, but her total points were second only to Biles and just 0.067 points behind Li.

As a result, Chiles was eliminated from the all-around final despite her strong performance, and the only way she could now compete is if either Biles or Li withdraws.

Read more: Update on Simone Biles after suffering 'minor calf injury' at Olympics

History of the “two people per country” rule

The two-athletes-per-nation rule was first instituted at the 1976 Olympics to diversify the competitive pool at the Summer Olympics. Because certain sports or events tend to be dominated by one country — as seen when Russia sent four athletes to the 1972 women's six-athlete vault final — the International Olympic Committee (IOC) wanted to change the rule, reports Nancy Armour of USA Today.

That resulted in the two-per-nation rule that initially applied to the four individual finals. The IOC still allowed three athletes per nation to compete in the 24-person women's individual all-around final.

Since 2004, participation in the all-around has been limited to two athletes per country. Since then, the United States has not qualified for the all-around final, despite having at least one athlete post a top-15 score.

Russia is not alone in this: the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) has three athletes in the top six at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, with Victoria Listunova missing out on the individual all-around final as a result.

Chile is not the only gymnast to fall victim to the two-sports-per-country rule at the 2024 Olympics. Elisa Iorio (Italy), Mana Okamura (Japan), Jade Barbosa (Brazil), Koba Ushioku (Japan) and Aurélie Tran (Canada) all scored better than Luisa Blanco, the final all-around qualifier, but were unable to compete because their countries already had two gymnasts on the national team.

There are many other examples of this phenomenon throughout the rule's history, leading many to question whether the rule, once instituted in the interest of fairness, is now unfair to medal hopefuls.

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How the 2024 Olympic Games will be run in artistic gymnastics

There are two types of qualifiers for artistic gymnastics at the 2024 Olympics. The first is the team qualifiers, where each country selects four of its five team members to compete on each apparatus. The top three points from each event are added to the team score, and the top eight teams advance to the team finals.

The United States earned 172.296 points in the team preliminaries, an improvement of 1.734 points from their 2021 result, and easily advanced to the team final.

The individual qualification rounds will be a bit different: a total of 24 athletes will be selected for the Individual All-Around Final, and eight athletes will be selected for the Individual Event Finals.

The highest scoring qualifiers on each apparatus will compete in the individual finals. However, as mentioned above, due to the two-per-nation rule, only the top two athletes from each country can participate. This means that the individual finals will not necessarily be made up of the eight (or 24) highest scoring athletes. This is evident from Chile's exclusion from the individual all-around final.

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2024 Olympic Gymnastics Women's Qualifying Results

team

Exclusion: Netherlands (159.096), Australia (158.964), France (158.979), South Korea (152.496)

All-round

* Due to the two-person per country rule, he was unable to qualify.

safe

* Due to the two-person per country rule, he was unable to qualify.

Floor exercises

Uneven bars

Simone Biles (14.433) is the top alternate in the event.

Balance beam