Category: Simone Biles

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Riley Gaines says she accepts Simone Biles’ ‘groveling apology’ on trans athletes

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Over the weekend, Simones Biles surprised many people by spontaneously calling out a right-wing transphobe named Riley Gaines. Riley was a college swimmer who competed one time against a group of swimmers, one of whom was a trans woman. That one swim competition radicalized Riley into a right-wing grifter/talking head whose sole issue is “bullying transgender people, especially trans children.” After Riley posted a photo of a kids’ team, attempting to target one trans child on the team, Simone had enough. Simone tagged Riley and said in part: “You’re truly sick, all of this campaigning because you lost a race. Straight up sore loser. You should be uplifting the trans community and perhaps finding a way to make sports inclusive OR creating a new avenue where trans feel safe in sports.” Simone also tweeted: “bully someone your own size, which would ironically be a male” at Riley directly. Well, Simone is too nice. A few days later, she posted this message:

I wanted to follow up from my last tweets. I’ve always believed competitive equity & inclusivity are both essential in sport. The current system doesn’t adequately balance these important principles, which often leads to frustration and heated exchanges, and it didn’t help for me to get personal with Riley, which I apologize for.

These are sensitive, complicated issues that I truly don’t have the answers or solutions to, but I believe it starts with empathy and respect. I was not advocating for policies that compromise fairness in women’s sports. My objection is to be singling out children for public scrutiny in ways that feel personal and harmful. Individual athletes—especially kids—should never be the focus of criticism of a flawed system they have no control over.

I believe sports organizations have a responsibility to come up with rules supporting inclusion while maintaining fair competition. We all want a future for sport that is fair, inclusive, and respectful.

Xoxo Simone

[From Simone Biles’s Twitter]

I still stand with Simone and her comments bring even more nuance to what was clearly her position all along: the start of these conversations should be empathy, respect, fairness AND inclusion. There are going to be flaws in the situation, but the answer isn’t using a public forum to bully, target and attack children. The one thing I don’t like is that she apologized to that ghastly bigot Riley Gaines. It only took one day for Riley to show her whole ass about this situation:

Gaines: I accept her apology and see this as a really big win. You have this famous public figure now issuing a groveling public apology and backtracks after tweeting pro-trans propaganda, if you will. pic.twitter.com/RVE34hiYEK

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 11, 2025

Yeah, I’m going to need Simone to come online again and say “On second thought, this bigot can kiss my ass, I meant every word I said before!” Don’t ever give these people an inch. “Groveling public apology” shut your f–king mouth.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Fox News screencap.

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Simone Biles

Simone Biles called anti-trans bigot Riley Gaines a ‘truly sick’ sore loser

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In recent months, I’ve had a growing awareness of Riley Gaines, a self-styled right-wing political commentator. She was a college athlete/swimmer whose defining moment was coming in fifth place at an NCAA swim meet and having to share the fifth-place trophy with a trans athlete. That is what radicalized her – the idea that a trans woman will compete in women’s sports. Instead of pausing and wondering if she was just a sore loser clinging to trans-panic as the political hot-button issue du jour, Riley has plowed ahead and made a career out of bullying trans children who participate in sports.

Well, I have no idea why GOAT Simone Biles decided that she had the time to take down Riley Gaines, but Simone did so online. It started when Gaines was trying to bully a trans child on a high school softball team, posting a photo of the team and basically putting a f–king target on this poor kid’s back. Simone wiped the floor with her:

@Riley_Gaines_ You’re truly sick, all of this campaigning because you lost a race. Straight up sore loser. You should be uplifting the trans community and perhaps finding a way to make sports inclusive OR creating a new avenue where trans feel safe in sports. Maybe a transgender… https://t.co/pjpzuZ0AlO

— Simone Biles (@Simone_Biles) June 6, 2025

bully someone your own size, which would ironically be a male @Riley_Gaines_

— Simone Biles (@Simone_Biles) June 6, 2025

I honestly didn’t expect Simone to come out this way for the trans community and the “stop bullying trans kids” community. It’s incredibly cool that she’s saying this with her whole chest. She left her comments open and they are despicable. The sheer number of people using Larry Nassar as some kind of clapback on Simone is deranged. Isn’t that the larger point though? Larry Nassar, a cisgendered man, abused dozens of children. While dipsh-ts like Riley Gaines cry about trans people in locker rooms, the overwhelming majority of predators are cisgendered men.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Avalon Red.

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Simone Biles Travel

Simone Biles is ‘truly ashamed’ she still hasn’t unpacked a suitcase from the Olympics

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When it comes to travelers, I feel like people are in one of two camps: those who unpack their suitcase as soon as they get home and those who leave that suitcase unpacked until it’s finally empty or time to pack up for the next time. Well, I think we can put Simone Biles in the second category. The 2024 Summer Olympics may have ended six months ago, but Simone shared to her Instagram stories that she’s “truly ashamed” to admit that she still has one suitcase (of clean clothing) that she still hasn’t unpacked.

Simone Biles reveals that she has more than a few remnants of the 2024 Olympics laying around her home. The 11-time Olympic medalist, 27, revealed on her Instagram Stories that she still has an “unpacked” suitcase that she brought back from the Paris Olympics, which ran from July 26 to Aug. 11.

The gymnast shared a photo of the blue baggage, which was left unzipped and showed several items including a white U.S.A. sweatshirt, a blue backpack and gray sweatpants. A pair of white sneakers could be seen on the floor beside the suitcase.

“I’m truly ashamed to admit that I still have not unpacked one of my suitcases from the Olympics,” she wrote over the photo, adding that it was full of “all clean clothes.”

This comes a month after the Olympian revealed in her cover story for Sports Illustrated that she has a “forbidden Olympics closet” in her home with husband Jonathan Owens, 29.

The “closet,” she explained at the time, is actually an infrequently used guest room, which the couple has turned into a designated space for the Olympic gear Biles has from the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. Sometimes, when her NFL player husband was away from home, she would pull out some of the items — such as leotards and Team USA pins — and cry, she told Sports Illustrated.

[From People]

Hey, I get it. Unpacking is annoying. Taking six months, though…oh, man! At least Simone has clean clothing sitting in that suitcase and not dirty workout clothes or tournament uniforms. That makes sense, though. It’s much easier to empty a suitcase by throwing dirty clothing in the laundry bin or washing machine. Sometimes, the thought of putting things away is enough to procrastinate doing so.

So, where does everybody stand on unpacking? I am very much in the former category. I unpack myself and both of my kids within a few hours of us getting home. Even if it’s late at night, I have to, at the very least, dump all of the dirty clothing into the wash to feel like I’ve done something in the unpacking process. I just don’t like having half-filled suitcases lying around and if I don’t take care of them right away, I’ll probably let them sit for six months, too.

photos credit: IMAGO/Daniela Porcelli/Avalon and via Instagram/Simone Biles/GK Elite sportswear and People.com

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Simone Biles

Simone Biles is Sports Illustrated’s 2024 Sportsperson of the Year

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Simone Biles has been named Sports Illustrated’s Sportsperson of the Year for 2024. An Olympic year, and Simone was one of the biggest stories of the Olympics. Is there also an American-centric bias? For sure. But I agree with this choice and I absolutely believe that Simone was one of the biggest sports stories of the year, her comeback Olympic games in Paris after she got the twisties in Tokyo and couldn’t compete at her normally-elite level. All eyes were on Simone in Paris. All of the gymnasts from other countries were holding their breath and waiting to see what Simone would do too.

You can read the Sports Illustrated SOTY profile and interview here. If you’ve watched Simone’s Netflix docuseries, you know what she’s been through in the past ten years and how everything fell apart before, during and after the Tokyo games. Simone is a champion for so many reasons – not just because she wins gold medals and executes flawless routines. She stands up for survivors, she celebrates her gymnastics colleagues and friends, she talks openly about her mental health and therapy, and all of that makes her one of the most important athletes in the world.

On a superficial note, I think it’s interesting that Sports Illustrated’s photographers did a more beautiful editorial with Simone than any of the women’s magazines or fashion magazines did with her. Is it because SI’s photographers know how to photograph Black women and fashion photographers don’t know how to do that?

I was honestly surprised that Simone wasn’t named Time Magazine’s Athlete of the Year too – Time gave that honor to Caitlin Clark. Interesting.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, cover courtesy of Sports Illustrated.

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Simone Biles

Simone Biles: a club in Paris tried to get me to buy $26,000 champagne

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Simone Biles is back from the Olympics and now she’s telling stories about some of her crazy experiences in Paris. Simone likes to do “get ready with me” segments on her TikTok, where she chats with fans as she puts on makeup. She does them pretty regularly including during the Olympics. Earlier this week, Simone made one of these videos while getting ready to go to a Chicago Bears preseason game. In the video, she tells this bonkers story about how she went to a Paris club after the Olympics closing ceremonies. While she was there, the unnamed club tried to charge her $26,000 for a bottle of champagne. $26,000!

“We had closing ceremonies at the Olympics. I went and after that we went out. You guys, this club tried to charge me $26,000 for a bottle of champagne. Like, are you insane?” Biles said while doing her makeup ahead of the preseason contest on Aug. 17.

“Obviously, I didn’t buy it. But why would you even try to play me like that? Like, that’s wild. And I don’t know, sometimes the attention, I’d rather not have it. I’d rather just be as normal as possible… I don’t know.”

Biles did not reveal the name of the club.

[From NY Post]

Dang, that is crazy! I know that there are some really expensive champagnes out there, but I doubt Simone would actually order one of those. I was curious and looked it up, and there is a bottle of champs that costs 1.838 million euros. Good lawd. Anyway, I have no doubt that the staff at that club recognized her and thought they could get away with charging her $26,000 for the bottle. That’s so gross. I feel for her in this situation, especially knowing that she wants to be as normal as possible when she goes out. Hopefully, now that she’s back in the States, she’ll be able to gain back some normalcy.

Also, side note, but is anyone planning on going to the Gold Over America Tour? It’ll star Simone, Jordan Chiles, Jade Carey, and other world medalists and international gymnasts. It sounds awesome, and my younger son LOVED all of the gymnastics at the Olympics. I would much rather take my kids to see that than Disney On Ice.

@simonebilesowens

yappin away about nothing ….. next time I’m playing music lmao – football season has started ????BEAR DOWN????

♬ original sound – Simone Biles

Photos via Instagram/Simone Biles and courtesy Netflix: Simone Biles Rising – Production Still Images

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MyKayla Skinner tearfully accuses Simone Biles of cyberbullying her

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This situation has now become insanely complicated, so I’m just going to do a broad-strokes summary of how we got here. MyKayla Skinner was an Olympic gymnast who won a silver medal in Tokyo. She’s now retired and having babies, and she’s also a self-styled influencer type with a very glossy social media. Before the Paris Olympics – and after she watched the US Olympic trials – she decided to chime in on the current state of Team USA’s gymnastics squad. She said sh-t like “Besides Simone [Biles], I feel like the talent and the depth just isn’t like what it used to be…A lot of girls don’t work as hard….The girls just don’t have the work ethic.” She also made some disgusting comments about why “the girls” don’t have a work ethic – she thinks it’s because the coaches can’t be mean and aggressive towards girls and women anymore, thanks to… safety measures put into place after Larry Nassar and all of the horrendous sh-t that went down at the Karolyi Ranch.

The thing is, Simone Biles has spent years, alongside Nassar’s hundreds of victims, trying to get accountability and huge changes from US Gymnastics. It’s worked too, and there have been huge changes and Simone deserves a lot of credit. After MyKayla’s bonkers YouTube video, she got a ton of backlash and she ended up deleting the video and she made an apology. Simone and some of the other gymnasts took a couple of minor swipes at her and then they headed to Paris, where Team USA won gold in the team competition. Afterwards, Simone posted a photo with the team and wrote “lack of talent, lazy, olympic champions.” A pitch-perfect subtweet, she didn’t even mention MyKayla’s name or tag her.

Well, guess who’s in her feelings and begging Simone Biles to stop cyberbullying?? This is one of the most thin-skinned Karen things I’ve ever f–king seen in my life. While death threats and threats of harm are always unacceptable, in the immortal words of Katt Williams, you shouldn’t have been talking sh-t. Simone had every right to clapback on MyKayla. Simone had every right to go even further – what MyKayla said and suggested about the coaches needing to be more “aggressive” with little girls and young women was despicable. It went against everything that Simone and the Nassar survivors have been painstakingly removing from the sport. And to address Simone personally? GMAFB.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, MyKayla’s IG.

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Simone Biles wins gold, Sunisa Lee wins bronze in Individual All-Around

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Thursday was the Olympic Gymnastics women’s individual all-around. The Paris Olympics have been scheduling the biggest events/tickets for the evening sessions, which means all of the best gymnastics stuff has been happening in the afternoon here on the east coast. Which means I’ve been watching a lot of the gymnastics at the gym! I love it. I nearly screamed on my treadmill several times during the competition, especially when a handful of the ladies wiped out. It was awful. And yet… it turned out to be so competitive, as the top three ladies – Simone Biles, Rebeca Andrade and Sunisa Lee all had to nail their final event, their floor routines. First Suni, then Rebeca, then Simone. Each woman nailed their floor, so for a second, Suni was in the gold-medal position. Then Rebeca. Then Simone stepped out as the last one and she killed it – her degree of difficulty is INSANE and while she had a couple of jumpy landings, all of the technical stuff was amazing. That ended up being the descending order of the medals. Simone won gold, then Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade won silver, then Sunisa won Bronze.

Simone Biles and Suni Lee are taking home some new hardware! Biles, the most decorated U.S. gymnast in Olympic history, added another victory to her resumé with a gold medal in the women’s all-around final at the 2024 Paris Olympics on Thursday, Aug. 1. Her Team USA teammate Lee came in third with a bronze medal, just two days after the pair won gold in the team finals. The match-up was a highly anticipated one, as Lee, 21, was the reigning gold medalist in the event from Tokyo in 2021 (Biles, 27, won the gold in Rio in 2016).

Biles started off strong on the vault, scoring an impressive 15.766. Though she struggled on the uneven bars, falling to third place after she flubbed her transition from the upper bar to the lower, Biles returned to form with a solid performance on the balance beam, and excelled on the floor to lead her way to victory.

Rebeca Andrade of Brazil, Biles’ friend and close competitor, won the silver medal.

Stars like Kendall Jenner, Tony Hawk, Stephen Curry, Martha Stewart and Seth Rogen were all in attendance to cheer on the star gymnasts.

The victory comes two days after Biles, Lee and their teammates Jordan Chiles, Jade Carey and Hezly Rivera dominated for gold in the team final. Biles’ gold medal came with the support of her family, as husband Jonathan Owens and parents Nellie and Ronald Biles were in the crowd at Bercy Arena to cheer her on.

[From People]

Incredible, and they’re not joking about all of the stars who came out for gymnastics. They weren’t only there for Simone either – Suni and Rebeca had a lot of support from the crowd, and the three ladies were very supportive of each other. Rebeca and Simone are apparently good friends. Anyway, gymnastics isn’t over! Individual events are coming up next. Do you want the breakdown? Saturday is vault, Sunday is uneven bars, Monday is balance beam and floor. Simone is competing in all except uneven bars (Suni is the only American doing that).

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.