Simone Biles has issued a thinly-veiled swipe at MyKayla Skinner after her ex-USA teammate criticized the 2024 Olympic gymnastics roster for not having ‘work ethic’.
Skinner, who won a silver medal on vault at the 2020 Games in Tokyo after stepping in for Biles, took aim at the Team USA athletes selected to represent the country in Paris this summer in a now-deleted video on YouTube.
‘Besides Simone, I feel like the talent and the depth just isn’t like what it used to be,’ the 27-year-old said.
Along with Biles, current all-around Olympic champion Suni Lee is on the 2024 roster, with Jade Carey, Jordan Chiles and Hezly Rivera making up the rest of the five-woman team.
‘The girls just don’t have the work ethic,’ Skinner continued before referencing the US Center for SafeSport – a non-profit organization set up to reduce sexual abuse of minors and athletes in US Olympic sports.
‘And it’s hard too because of SafeSport. Like, coaches can’t get on athletes and they have to be really careful what they say.
‘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, I feel like, a little aggressive and a little intense.’
Skinner’s comments sparked outrage on social media before she released an apology, insisting her words were taken out of context.
However, while she didn’t mention her by name, Biles has appeared to fire back at her former teammate in a post on Threads.
The four-time Olympic gold medalist wrote: ‘not everyone needs a mic and a platform’.
Biles and Skinner have known each other for quite some time after both representing USA at the 2014 World Championships in Nanning.
They also both picked up Olympic medals in Tokyo seven years later despite Biles withdrawing from several events with a case of the ‘twisties’ – a mental block that that sees a gymnast lose control of their body during a twisting skill in midair.
Amid the backlash over her recent comments, Skinner said in an Instagram video last week: ‘I feel like a lot of you guys had misinterpreted or misunderstood exactly what I was meaning or had said.
‘A lot of the stuff that 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.
‘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. And I’m not sticking up for Marta or saying what she did was good, I’m just saying it was different.’
