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Louise Thomas
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Simone Biles has explained why she’s been advocating for her teammates throughout the Paris Olympics.
The Olympian recently competed in her last event in the Games in which she took home the silver medal, but when the Team itself earned a gold medal Biles posted a photo of them on Instagram, referencing a since-deleted YouTube video by former Olympian MyKayla Skinner.
Skinner talked about the recent team of Olympic gymnasts and their lack of “work ethic.”
“Besides Simone I feel like the talent and the depth isn’t what it used to be,” she said at the time. “I just noticed, obviously, a lot of girls don’t work as hard. The girls don’t have the work ethic.”
However, Skinner had already shown her support for the US gymnasts after their gold medal win, posting a photo of the winning US team from July 30 on her Instagram Story, along with three heart emojis.
Biles then captioned the team’s gold medal picture, “lack of talent, lazy olympic champions.”
In a recent interview with People, Biles mentioned why she’s been so vocal about her teammates. “It’s important because you have to teach them to use their voices,” she told the outlet. “And if not, you’re a voice for the voiceless, which is OK.”
She also added that she does take pride in her role as a “team lead.”
“I just felt like it was right in that moment to stand up for them, because they’re so young and they haven’t fully stood in their power yet,” she said.
After Biles’ original Instagram post, she revealed on Instagram that she was blocked, but didn’t specify by whom. Fellow Team USA gymnast Jordan Chiles then clarified on her Instagram story that it was Skinner who had blocked Biles. Chiles posted a photo on her Instagram story that she had taken of Biles’s phone, on which she was unable to see any of Skinner’s posts. She captioned it: “When she blocks Simone.”
The latest development between Skinner and Biles came when the former turned to Instagram on Tuesday August 6 to ask Biles to “put a stop” to the situation as she had received “disgusting” threats of “physical harm” towards her husband, Jonas Harmer, and their daughter, Charlotte.
“I made a comment about work ethic and what seems to be taking pace with the rising generation. To be totally clear, I take 100 per cent responsibility for poorly articulating the point I was trying to make and the last thing I wanted was to cause harm or offend our US Olympic team,” she said. “I know these women are incredible, the very best of the best, and almost all of them are my former teammates who I have enjoyed very much cheering on the last few years.”
Skinner mentioned that she did issue apologies both publicly and privately after deleting her original YouTube video, with Biles being the only team member to respond saying that she was “proud” of her.
“You guys can imagine my surprise last week when I was celebrating our team winning gold just to see this brought up all over again by a caption on an Instagram post,” she added. “If Simone truly believes that I called our team lazy and lacking talent and if that’s really how she feels, I am really heartbroken over it. But not just heartbroken because it isn’t what I feel or even how I previously said, but because Simone’s latest post and others that followed it fueled another wave of hateful comments, DMs, articles and emails.”
She concluded with a personal message to Biles herself: “To Simone, I am asking you directly and publicly to please put a stop to this. Please ask your followers to stop.”
“You have been an incredible champion for mental health awareness and a lot of people need your help now. We’ve been attacked in ways that I’m certain you never intended. Your performance, the team’s performance and the Olympics in general should be a time that we support one another.”
