When Simone Biles posted a congratulatory message to the US ladies’s gymnastics staff following their huge win on July 30, her caption might need appeared a little bit stunning to people not within the know. The textual content? “lack of expertise, lazy, olympic champions,” adopted by a string of emojis.
To be clear: After the day Staff USA had, dominating within the staff finals to clinch their first staff gold since 2016, Biles actually was not calling out teammates Suni Lee, Jade Carey, Jordan Chiles, and Hezly Rivera (or herself) for slacking.
As an alternative, the caption was seemingly an epic clapback at a remark made by former Olympic teammate MyKayla Skinner.
Confused? We’re right here to make clear. (Trace: It began with a YouTube video.)
Who’s MyKayla Skinner?
Skinner, a 27-year-old Arizona native, is a former elite gymnast. She competed alongside Biles on the 2020 Tokyo Summer time Video games in 2021—not as a member of the five-person staff, however as a person occasion specialist—and went on to win a silver medal within the vault. She has since retired from gymnastics and runs a YouTube channel that paperwork her transition away from skilled sports activities.
And simply to be clear, Skinner is a distinct individual from McKayla Maroney, the Olympic medalist whose dissatisfied face grew to become an enormous meme in the course of the 2012 London Video games, and Mikaela Shiffrin, the two-time Olympic gold medalist in alpine snowboarding.
So what’s this a few feud?!
Skinner’s “feud” (as numerous shops are calling it) with the Staff USA gymnastics staff began earlier this summer season. In a since deleted YouTube video after the Olympic staff choice on June 30, Skinner threw some not-so-subtle shade on the present crop of gymnasts, based on CNN.
“In addition to Simone, I really feel just like the expertise and the depth simply isn’t like what it was,” she stated within the video, CNN reported. “Lots of women don’t work as exhausting,” she added. “The ladies simply don’t have the work ethic.”
And she or he appeared responsible the US Heart for SafeSport, a company established within the wake of the Larry Nassar scandal that handles allegations of abuse throughout Olympic sports activities. “(Coaches) should be actually cautious about what they are saying, which in some methods is basically good, however on the similar time, to get the place that you must be in gymnastics, it’s a must to be … a little bit aggressive and a little bit intense,” Skinner stated, based on the Related Press.
Gymnastics whistleblower Rachael Denhollander, the primary lady to publicly accuse Nassar of sexual abuse, responded on July 5. In a publish on X, the platform previously often called Twitter, she wrote, “That is exactly why continued training is desperately wanted. When an athlete reminisces about probably the most abusive coaches in gymnastics historical past, suggesting her abusive mannequin was obligatory for work ethic, we now have an issue.”
Understandably, Skinner’s feedback weren’t too well-received by anybody else, both. “Not everybody wants a mic and a platform,” Biles wrote in a July 3 publish on Threads that racked up greater than 18,000 likes.
Discussion about this post