When Simone Biles posted a congratulatory message to the US girls’s gymnastics staff following their massive win on July 30, her caption may 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 Workforce USA had, dominating within the staff finals to clinch their first staff gold since 2016, Biles definitely was not calling out teammates Suni Lee, Jade Carey, Jordan Chiles, and Hezly Rivera (or herself) for slacking.
As a substitute, 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 upset 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 couple of feud?!
Skinner’s “feud” (as a lot of shops are calling it) with the Workforce USA gymnastics staff began earlier this summer time. 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, in keeping with CNN.
“Apart from 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. “A whole lot of women don’t work as onerous,” she added. “The women simply don’t have the work ethic.”
And he or she appeared accountable the US Middle for SafeSport, a corporation established within the wake of the Larry Nassar scandal that handles allegations of abuse throughout Olympic sports activities. “(Coaches) need to be actually cautious about what they are saying, which in some methods is absolutely good, however on the similar time, to get the place it’s essential to be in gymnastics, it’s a must to be … a little bit aggressive and a little bit intense,” Skinner stated, in keeping with the Related Press.
Gymnastics whistleblower Rachael Denhollander, the primary lady to publicly accuse Nassar of sexual abuse, responded on July 5. In a put up on X, the platform previously referred to as Twitter, she wrote, “That is exactly why continued schooling is desperately wanted. When an athlete reminisces about one of the vital abusive coaches in gymnastics historical past, suggesting her abusive mannequin was needed for work ethic, we’ve got 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 put up on Threads that racked up greater than 18,000 likes.
