MyKayla Skinner asks Simone Biles for help.
Skinner, a former U.S. gymnast who won a silver medal in vault at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, says she and her loved ones have been victims of cyberbullying and death threats after an Instagram post by Biles last week appeared to reference recent comments by Skinner criticizing some current members of the U.S. gymnastics team.
Now Skinner is urging her former teammate to put an end to it all.
“My family and friends do not deserve to be caught in the crossfire here. They did nothing,” Skinner said in a video she posted to Instagram on Tuesday. “So I am asking Simone directly and publicly to put a stop to this. Ask your followers to stop. You have been an incredible advocate for mental health awareness and many people need your help right now. We have been hurt and attacked in ways I’m sure you never intended.”
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As of Wednesday morning, Biles had not publicly responded to Skinner’s post.
Following the U.S. Olympic gymnastics trials in June, Skinner posted on YouTube her thoughts as a former gymnast about the athletes representing the country at the Paris Games.
In the now-deleted video, Skinner said, “Other than Simone, I feel like the talent and depth just isn’t what it used to be,” and “I mean, obviously a lot of the girls don’t work as hard anymore. The girls just lack the work ethic.”
A few days later, Biles posted on Threads: “Not everyone needs a microphone and a platform.” Many interpreted this as a response to Skinner, who eventually apologized.
Biles won four medals in Paris – gold in the team competition, all-around and vault, and silver on floor exercise – bringing her total to 11 medals at the Olympics. After the U.S. team’s victory on July 30, Biles posted photos on Instagram of herself and her teammates Suni Lee, Jordan Chiles, Jade Carey and Hezly Rivera celebrating.
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“Lack of talent, lazy, Olympic champion ❤️🥇🇺🇸,” Biles wrote in the post.
Social media users immediately recognized the obvious reference to Skinner’s comments. The next day, Biles posted on X: “I got blocked.” Chiles posted a photo to her Instagram stories that presumably showed Biles’ phone with Skinner’s Instagram page open, along with a caption from Chiles: “When she blocks Simone.”
Skinner, 27, said in her video this week that she sent “every single woman on the team an individual message” following her comments in June.
She said: “You can imagine my surprise last week when I was celebrating our team’s gold win and saw this whole thing brought up again in an Instagram caption. If Simone really believes that I called our team lazy and talentless, and if she really feels that way, then it breaks my heart.
“But I am heartbroken not only because it is not what I feel or what I have said before, but also because Simone’s latest post and the others that followed it sparked another wave of hateful comments, direct messages, articles and emails – hate that includes death threats against me, my family and even my agent.”
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Skinner said there had been “threats of physical violence” against her daughter, who was born in September.
“So please, at this point I’m just asking that it stops for the sake of my family,” she said, “because enough is enough.”
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
