Simone Biles Appears to Subtly Criticize Mykayla Skinner’s Comments on ‘Work Ethic’ After Winning Gold Medal at the Olympics

Simone Biles appeared to make a sly jab at MyKayla Skinner following her gold medal win with the American women’s gymnastics team at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

On Tuesday, July 30, Biles, 27, posted a photo of herself holding up an American flag with colleagues Suni Lee, Jordan Chiles, Jade Carey, and Hezly Rivera on Instagram. The caption read, “Lack of talent, lazy, olympic champions.”

Fans with keen eyes immediately made connections between Biles’ caption and Skinner’s comments from earlier this month, in which she berated the 2024 gymnasts for lacking the same “work ethic” as previous Team USA members.

In a July YouTube video, Skinner asserted that the female generation now “doesn’t work as hard” or has the “talent or depth” of their predecessors.

In response to Biles’ Tuesday post, one user commented, “The shade of it all you better GOAT!,” while another said, “F AROUND AND FIND OUT.” “THIS CAPTION WINS A GOLD MEDAL,” said a third individual.

When she made her first comments, Skinner gave some credit to SafeSport, an independent group created to stop and deal with “sexual, physical, and emotional abuse” inside the American Olympic and Paralympic movements, for the reason she thought gymnasts had altered their training methods.

“In some respects, it’s great that coaches can’t criticize athletes, but in order to advance in gymnastics, you do need to be able to… a bit intense, a little aggressive,” she claimed in the video.

Members of Team USA responded to her comments on social media. “Not everyone needs a mic and a platform,” Biles stated on Threads, while Chiles’ mother, Gina, replied on X, “Whoa.” She posted that after really saying it out. That is noteworthy.

Meanwhile, Skinner has now expressed regret for her behavior, saying that she was “misinterpreted” and “misunderstood.”

In an Instagram Story from July, Skinner said:

“A lot of the stuff I was talking about wasn’t always about the current team because I love and support all the girls that made it and I’m so proud of them.” “It was more about returning to my own gym, and the work ethic is different from what it was during the Marta [Karolyi] era when we were doing gymnastics.”

Since both Biles and Skinner competed for Team USA in the Olympics in 2016 and 2020, their relationship has a lengthy history. As an alternate, Skinner went to Rio in 2016 when Biles won her first Olympic gold medal.

Skinner replaced Biles in the vault final four years later after Biles withdrew due to “twisties,” a term used to characterize a gymnast’s loss of control during competition.

Although Skinner won the silver medal in Tokyo that year and declared that the Olympics would be her last before retiring, she was unable to get past the qualification round for the gymnastics all-around final.

Biles and her colleagues persevered in this year’s games, winning the gold on Tuesday, despite Skinner’s early misgivings about the 2024 squad. After their victory, Biles surpassed Shannon Miller to become the most decorated American gymnast in Olympic history.

Team USA maintained its lead throughout the competition on Tuesday as Biles, Lee, 21, Chiles, 23, and Carey, 24 demonstrated their prowess on the vault, uneven bars, balance beam, and floor exercise.

Following their triumph, the women will compete in the women’s all-around competition on Thursday, August 1. Then, from Saturday, August 3, to Monday, August 5, they will compete in the individual event finals.

After her balancing beam routine on Sunday, July 28, Biles had a calf injury during the all-around qualifiers. Despite the discomfort, she bandaged up her leg and went on to compete in her next events.

Biles referred to this year’s competitions as a “redemption tour” for herself and her colleagues after winning the silver medal four years ago in an interview with Hoda Kotb earlier this month.

“All of us didn’t have our best performances in Tokyo, so we’re eager to go out there and kill it,” the woman stated.

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