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Louise Thomas
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McKayla Maroney has doubled down on Simone Biles’ apparent dig at MyKayla Skinner, after the US women’s gymnastic team’s big win at the Paris Olympics.
The former artistic gymnast, 28, took to the comments of Biles’ Instagram post to seemingly shade Skinner, who previously claimed that the gymnastic team’s “depth isn’t what it used to be.” Biles also appeared to hit back at Skinner’s remarks in the caption of her post – which showed her and her teammates after they won – as she wrote: “Lack of talent, lazy, Olympic champions.”
In her comment, Maroney first congratulated Biles and then jokingly apologized, seemingly because her first name is similar to Skinner’s.
“It doesn’t get more iconic than this... She f’d around n found out fr,” Maroney wrote. “Feels like I need to apologize just to redeem my first name.”
Despite her controversial comments about the US team, Skinner has still shown her support for the US gymnasts after their gold medal win. After Biles posted her apparent dig, Skinner posted a photo of the winning US team from July 30 on her Instagram Story, along with three heart emojis.
While Skinner didn’t have a specific reaction to Biles’ post, the decorated Olympian added fuel to the fire of feud rumors. In a post shared to X, formerly known as Twitter, on July 31, Biles wrote, “oops I’ve been blocked,” prompting fans to speculate that the person who blocked her was Skinner.
The speculation appeared to be confirmed by Jordan Chiles, who took a picture of her teamates’ phone, revealing Biles was unable to see any of Skinner’s posts on Instagram. In the caption of the picture, shared to her Instagram post, Chiles wrote: “When she blocks Simone.”
Earlier this month, Skinner went viral when she said the rest of the team didn’t have the level of “talent” of Olympic champion Biles.
“Besides Simone, I feel like the talent and the depth just isn’t like what it used to be,” the 2020 Olympic vault silver medalist claimed. “Just notice like, I mean, obviously a lot of girls don’t work as hard. The girls just don’t have the work ethic.”
After that, multiple athletes appeared to call Skinner out, with Biles notably writing on Instagram Threads that “not everyone needs a mic and a platform.” Meanwhile, Chiles’ mother commented: “Whoa. She really said that out loud and posted it. That’s something....”
However, Skinner later took to her Instagram Story to clarify the comments she made in a YouTube video. “Hey, guys, just wanted to pop on here really quick, because I know we did the recap on YouTube,” she started explaining in the video, which was shared earlier this month . “And I feel like a lot of you guys had misinterpreted or misunderstood exactly what I was meaning or had said.”
The former gymnast continued to clarify her comments were primarily based on her own experience getting back into gymnastics and how she’s seen younger gymnasts today train.
“It was more about going back into my own gym, just the work ethic is different compared to when we were doing gymnastics in the [former team coordinator] Márta [Károlyi] era,” she continued. “And I’m not sticking up for Márta or saying what she did was good, I’m just saying it was different. So anyway, sorry for anything that got out of context or seemed hurtful. That is never my intention. And seriously, throughout the video, I was so pumped for the girls, and it was so fun watching [the Olympic] trials and doing a live with everybody.”
