Simone Biles wins Instagram gold after dominating in Paris

Had former US gymnast MyKayla Skinner known the NSFW name the US women s gymnastics team uses to refer to themselves before they cruised to the gold m...

Had former US gymnast MyKayla Skinner known the NSFW name the US women’s gymnastics team uses to refer to themselves before they cruised to the gold medal in Tuesday’s Olympic team final in Paris, she might have thought twice about criticizing the group last month.

"Lack of talent, lazy, olympic champions,” US superstar Simone Biles captioned an Instagram photo of the Americans celebrating their gold medal on Tuesday night. Biles didn’t tag her former teammate, but the caption sure seemed to be a reference to Skinner’s comments after this year’s US Olympic gymnastics trials.

"Besides Simone, I feel like the talent and the depth just isn’t what it used to be,” Skinner, who won the silver medal on vault at the 2020 Tokyo Games, said in a since-deleted YouTube video. 

"I mean, obviously, a lot of girls just don’t work as hard. The girls just don’t have the work ethic, and it’s hard too because of SafeSport. 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 a little aggressive, a little intense.”

(The US Center for SafeSport was an independent body set up by Congress in the wake of the Larry Nassar scandal to investigate misconduct across Olympic sports.)