Shortly after the U.S. women’s gymnastics team won gold at the Paris Olympics, an old clip of JD Vance talking about Simone Biles went viral on social media.
Led by 27-year-old Biles, the U.S. won the team final for the first time since the 2016 Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro. At the 2020 games in Tokyo — which was delayed to 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic — the team won silver.
That Toyka team, however, had to finish the event without Biles. After making a number of uncommon mistakes in both qualifying and the warm-up for the final, she withdrew from the competition. Biles later cited her mental health as the reason for the decision, and explained she had been experiencing the “twisties” — a loss of spatial awareness and body control during aerial maneuvers that greatly increases the risk of serious injury.
Following the news of her withdrawal, Vance appeared on Fox News’ Outnumbered in July 2021 to criticize the supportive response to Biles’ decision to leave the competition.
“Well, I think, obviously, it’s understandable that she was going through an incredible amount of pressure,” Vance said. “What I find so weird about this — and it reflects on the media more than it does on Simone Biles — is that we’ve tried to turn a very tragic moment — Simone Biles quitting the Olympic team — into this act of heroism. And I think it reflects pretty poorly on our sort of therapeutic society that we try to praise people not for moments of strength, not for moments of heroism, but for their weakest moments.
“Being an athlete at that level is incredibly tough. A normal response in this moment would be to say, ‘It’s just a shame that she’s going through this. It’s a shame that she quit,’ but instead, what our press has done, I think, is turn this into this weird therapeutic moment. ‘Let’s praise her for doing this.’ And I think that’s really where the problem herein lies.”
Watch above via Fox News.
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