When Simone Biles posted a congratulatory message to the US ladies’s gymnastics group following their massive win on July 30, her caption might need appeared slightly 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 group finals to clinch their first group gold since 2016, Biles actually 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 group, 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 unique particular person from McKayla Maroney, the Olympic medalist whose disenchanted face turned an enormous meme in the course of 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 numerous shops are calling it) with the Crew USA gymnastics group began earlier this summer season. In a since deleted YouTube video after the Olympic group choice on June 30, Skinner threw some not-so-subtle shade on the present crop of gymnasts, in keeping with CNN.
“Apart from Simone, I really feel just like the expertise and the depth simply isn’t like what it was,” she mentioned within the video, CNN reported. “A number of ladies don’t work as onerous,” she added. “The women simply don’t have the work ethic.”
And he or she appeared in charge the US Middle for SafeSport, a company established within the wake of the Larry Nassar scandal that handles allegations of abuse throughout Olympic sports activities. “(Coaches) should be actually cautious about what they are saying, which in some methods is actually good, however on the identical time, to get the place you have to be in gymnastics, it’s important to be … slightly aggressive and slightly intense,” Skinner mentioned, in keeping with the Related Press.
Gymnastics whistleblower Rachael Denhollander, the primary girl to publicly accuse Nassar of sexual abuse, responded on July 5. In a put up 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 abusive coaches in gymnastics historical past, suggesting her abusive mannequin was obligatory for work ethic, we’ve got 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 put up on Threads that racked up greater than 18,000 likes.