After questioning the work ethic of this year’s team of U.S. Olympic gymnasts, MyKayla Skinner is asking Simone Biles for help in stopping the hate she’s getting online.
Source: Patrick Smith / Getty
The former Olympic gymnast made her opinion on the current talent pool very clear in a now-deleted YouTube video, seemingly calling out Suni Lee, Jade Carey, Jordan Chiles, and Hezly Rivera, who are all representing Team USA alongside Simone Biles in Paris.
“Besides Simone, I feel like the talent and the depth just isn’t like what it used to be,” MyKayla said.
“The girls just don’t have the work ethic,” she continued, going on to reference the U.S. Center for SafeSport, a nonprofit organization, helping to end abuse in athletics. “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 said.
MyKayla ended up issuing an apology soon thereafter, taking to Instagram on July 3 and saying she was “sorry for anything that got out of context or seemed hurtful.”
“I feel like a lot of you guys had misinterpreted or misunderstood exactly what I was meaning or had said,” she continued.
Following her comments and her subsequent apology, the U.S. women’s gymnastics team took home the gold medal in the team final on July 30.
Biles had the perfect response to her former teammate’s comments, posting a photo with her teammates following their gold medal win and writing in her caption: “lack of talent, lazy, olympic champions ❤️🥇🇺🇸.”
Of course, this only resulted in MyKayla getting dumped on even more, with fans loving Simone’s clapback and her insistence on standing up for her friends. B
ut, about a week later, Skinner returned to Instagram to ask for Biles’ help, claiming she and her family had gotten death threats for the comments she made about Team USA.
“I sincerely hoped that this topic wouldn’t need to be revisited but unfortunately things have really gotten out of hand lately,” she began in her video. “And it’s one thing to disagree with me regarding something I have said or a point I was trying to make, but it’s something else entirely when that turns into cyberbullying or even worse,” Skinner said in her Instagram video. “Watching people cheer on the bullying — which has led to threats of physical harm to me my husband and our daughter — is disgusting. So please at this point, I’m just asking for it to stop for the sake of my family because enough is enough.”
Skinner continued, “If Simone truly believes that I called our team lazy and lacking talent and if that’s really how she feels, I am really heartbroken over it. But not just heartbroken because it isn’t what I feel or even how I previously said, but because Simone’s latest post and others that followed it fueled another wave of hateful comments, DMs, articles and emails. Hate that includes death threats to me my family and even my agent. My family and my friends don’t deserve to be caught in the crossfire here. They’ve done nothing.”
“To Simone, I am asking you directly and publicly to please put a stop to this,” Mykayla pleaded. “Please ask your followers to stop. You have been an incredible champion for mental health awareness and a lot of people need your help now. We’ve been attacked in ways that I’m certain you never intended. Your performance, the team’s performance and the Olympics in general should be a time that we support one another.”
Simone has yet to respond to MyKayla’s video or her pleas for help.
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