Simone Biles put her former teammate MyKayla Skinner on blast. And it was deserved

PARIS — There are times it’s OK not to talk.

Advisable, even.

The scorch marks on MyKayla Skinner are going to be visible for a while after Simone Biles put her on blast Wednesday. Deservedly so, mind you. The Tokyo Olympian had the audacity earlier this summer to criticize the women who eventually made the team for the Paris Games , saying they weren’t as talented and didn’t have the same work ethic as in Skinner’s day.

And then those women won the Olympic gold medal , something Skinner never did. She was passed over for the five-woman Rio team, despite finishing fourth at Olympic trials. She wasn't chosen for the Tokyo team, going as an event specialist instead. She won a silver medal on vault.

“Lack of talent, lazy, olympic champions,” Biles captioned an Instagram post of her and her teammates — Jade Carey, Jordan Chiles , Suni Lee and Hezly Rivera — celebrating their gold medal Tuesday night.

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Lee chimed in, mocking a TikTok Skinner made over the weekend for good measure. Nastia Liukin, the 2008 Olympic champion whose parents coach Rivera, called Biles’ post a “micdrop.”

Within hours, Skinner had blocked Biles on Instagram — as Chiles was happy to document on her Instagram story.

You could chalk this up to pettiness, or the “Mean Girls” spite that everyone always assumes exists between women — talented, ambitious women in particular. Is there drama in gymnastics? Of course. After winning gold, Biles, Chiles and Lee disclosed they’d needed a “clear the air” session the night before the team final because they weren’t communicating well.

“I said, 'Suni, I’m not doing this right now. We’re gonna have this talk,’” Chiles said.

But the same happens in plenty of other sports, too. When you take people who train in different places and are chasing the same rare prize and throw them together on a team, it’s not always going to be sunshine and rainbows. Just ask the U.S. fencers .

Given Lee, Chiles and Rivera are all women of color, however, there’s a dog whistle heard in Skinner’s comments that is disturbingly similar to the criticism long directed at Biles and Gabby Douglas before her. Pretty much every athlete of color, if we’re being honest.

They don’t really work. They’re not smart. They’re only where they are because of their natural talent.

“Besides Simone, I feel like the talent and the depth just isn't like what it used to be," Skinner said in a since-deleted YouTube video recapping the Olympic trials. "I just notice, like, I mean, obviously a lot of girls don't work as hard. The girls just don't have the work ethic."

Tweet, tweet, tweet. All Skinner was missing was criticism of the Americans’ hair.

It’s nonsense. You don’t make an Olympic team after the shoulder injury Chiles had earlier this year without a lot of work. Ditto for Lee, who had days where she couldn’t even put on her grips because of two kidney diseases . You think Rivera just rolled out of bed and onto the podium?

Every one of these women, or young woman in the 16-year-old Rivera’s case, has sweated and sacrificed as much as Skinner ever did to get where they are. To demean that, or their accomplishments, is disrespectful. To do it in the manner Skinner did is harmful.

And Biles isn’t willing to take it anymore. Not when it’s said about her and certainly not when it’s said about her teammates.

Biles went through a terrifying experience at the Tokyo Olympics, developing a case of “the twisties” that caused her to lose her sense of where she was in the air. She withdrew one event into the team final and then pulled out of the all-around, vault, uneven bars and floor exercise finals. She couldn’t tell if she was going to land on her feet or her neck, and continuing to compete would have put her at risk for serious injury.

Or worse.

That didn’t stop certain people from calling her a quitter, telling her she was weak, accusing her of being selfish and suggesting she not bother coming back to the United States. It was devastating at the time — there’s a heartbreaking scene in her new Netflix docuseries, "Rising," where she fears “the world is going to hate me” — but Biles now sees these “patriots” and keyboard warriors for exactly what they are.

“They want to see us fail,” Biles said after the Olympic trials. “They want to see the rise to success and then as soon as you get it, and you take that and run with it and you start reigning for a really long time, they want to see the downfall.”

Biles knows she’s not going to change everyone's hearts and minds. There are certain people who are simply never going to get it. But she doesn’t have to accept it, either.

Even from a former teammate and friend.

“(The hate) is really unfortunate because sports hasn’t seen athletes like (us),” Biles said at trials, speaking about the haters in general. “You really have to give them their flowers in the sport because, once they’re gone, you’re going to miss them.”

Well, not all of them. Some of them are best forgotten.

Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Simone Biles put her former teammate MyKayla Skinner on blast. And it was deserved