When Simone Biles posted a congratulatory message to the US ladies’s gymnastics crew following their large win on July 30, her caption might need appeared somewhat shocking to of us 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 Crew USA had, dominating within the crew finals to clinch their first crew 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 season Video games in 2021—not as a member of the five-person crew, 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 special particular person from McKayla Maroney, the Olympic medalist whose dissatisfied face turned an enormous meme throughout 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 retailers are calling it) with the Crew USA gymnastics crew began earlier this summer season. In a since deleted YouTube video after the Olympic crew choice on June 30, Skinner threw some not-so-subtle shade on the present crop of gymnasts, in response to CNN.
“Moreover Simone, I really feel just like the expertise and the depth simply isn’t like what it was once,” she mentioned within the video, CNN reported. “A variety of ladies don’t work as arduous,” she added. “The women simply don’t have the work ethic.”
And she or he appeared guilty the US Heart for SafeSport, a corporation established within the wake of the Larry Nassar scandal that handles allegations of abuse throughout Olympic sports activities. “(Coaches) must be actually cautious about what they are saying, which in some methods is basically good, however on the similar time, to get the place it’s essential be in gymnastics, you need to be … somewhat aggressive and somewhat intense,” Skinner mentioned, in response to the Related Press.
Gymnastics whistleblower Rachael Denhollander, the primary girl to publicly accuse Nassar of sexual abuse, responded on July 5. In a submit on X, the platform previously generally known as Twitter, she wrote, “That is exactly why continued training is desperately wanted. When an athlete reminisces about one of the crucial abusive coaches in gymnastics historical past, suggesting her abusive mannequin was essential for work ethic, now we 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 submit on Threads that racked up greater than 18,000 likes.
