Simone Biles seemingly clapped back at MyKayla Skinner after she and the rest of USA’s women’s gymnastics team brought home the gold medal at the 2024 Olympics.
“Lack of talent, lazy, Olympic champions,” Simone, 27, wrote via Instagram on Tuesday, July 30.
The picture Simone shared showed herself, Jordan Chiles, Suni Lee, Jade Carey and Hezly Rivera holding the American flag while celebrating their win.
Fans quickly noticed that Simone’s caption seemed to be throwing shade at MyKayla, 27, and her comments about the women’s gymnastics team in June. Several people applauded Simone’s caption in the comments.
“It doesn’t get more iconic than this.. She f’d around n found out fr. Feels like I need to apologize just to redeem my first name,” McKayla Maroney, a former Olympic gymnast, wrote.
Simone’s husband, Jonathan Owens, chimed in, “F AROUND AND FIND OUT.”
“Mic drop,” added former Olympian gymnast Nastia Liukin.
MyKayla competed alongside Simone in the 2020 Olympics, but opted not to try out for this year’s team. During the Olympic trials, the Arizona native made some remarks that ruffled some feathers in the gymnastics community when she talked about the differences she claimed to see with this year’s team.
“Besides Simone, I feel like the talent and the depth just isn’t what it used to be. I mean, obviously, a lot of girls don’t work as hard. The girls just don’t have the work ethic,” MyKayla said during a YouTube video. “A lot of girls don’t work as hard. It’s hard, too, because of SafeSport. Coaches can’t get on athletes which in some ways is really good but at the same time, to get to where you need to be in gymnastics you do have to be … a little aggressive, a little intense.”
MyKayla’s remarks didn’t go over well with several fans as well as Jordan Chiles’ mother, Gina Chiles, Simone, and others who called out the 2020 Olympian.
“Whoa. She really said that out loud and posted it. That’s something,” Gina wrote via X on July 3.
Simone noted via Threads that “not everyone needs a mic and a platform” on the same day.
One fan wrote, “THIS CAPTION WINS A GOLD MEDAL,” while another added, “The shade of it all you better GOAT!”
However, MyKayla has since apologized for the remarks and said that her comments were “misunderstood.”
“A lot of the stuff I was talking about wasn’t always necessarily about the current team because I love and support all the girls that made it and I’m so proud of them,” MyKayla said via her Instagram Stories the week of July 5. “It was more about going back into my own gym and the work ethic is different compared to when we were doing gymnastics in the Marta [Karolyi] era.”
Marta, who was the former national team coordinator for USA Gymnastics, allegedly forced the athletes to follow strict rules and forbid them from asking questions about her method, according to the Associated Press in 2018.
“I’m not sticking up for Marta or saying what she did was good,” MyKayla continued in her apology. “I’m just saying it was different. So sorry for anything that got out of context or seemed hurtful; I love those girls and I’m seriously so happy for them so I would never do anything to make them feel otherwise.”
