MyKayla Skinner reacts to Team USA winning gold after controversial comments about ‘work ethic’
MyKayla Skinner has shown her support for the 2024 USA gymnastics team after their win in the Women’s final on Tuesday July 30.
The team’s gold medal win comes after previously taking home the silver medal in Tokyo after Simone Biles dropped out of the competitions due to a case of the “twisties.” At the time, Skinner took her place as an alternate.
Skinner recently posted a photo of the winning team on her Instagram Story with three heart emojis, a display of support that came around the same time Biles also shared to Instagram a post of her and the entire team celebrating their win. “Lack of talent, lazy, olympic champions,” Biles captioned the post.
The quote appeared to be a dig at Skinner based off of a since-deleted YouTube video where she criticized the current generation of gymnasts for lacking the “work ethic” of past teams.
“Besides Simone I feel like the talent and the depth isn’t what it used to be,” Skinner said at the time. “I just noticed, obviously, a lot of girls don’t work as hard. The girls don’t have the work ethic.”
Skinner also spoke about a shift in approach for how coaches treat gymnasts, adding: “Coaches can’t get on athletes 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.”
Shortly after the video, Skinner apologized for her comments in an Instagram Story video posted on July 3. “I feel like a lot of you guys had misinterpreted or misunderstood exactly what I was meaning or had said,” she told her viewers. “A lot of the stuff that I was talking about wasn’t always necessarily about the current team, because I love and support all the girls that made it and I’m so proud of them.”
“It was more about going back into my own gym and the work ethic is different compared to when we were doing gymnastics in the Marta [Karolyi, former US coach] era,” she added.
Skinner added that her intentions were never meant to hurt the feelings of the current Olympic team.
“Sorry for anything that got out of context or seemed hurtful,” she continued. “Throughout the video, I was so pumped for the girls and it was so fun watching trials and doing a live with everybody.”
“I love those girls and I’m seriously so happy for them” she concluded. “I would never do anything to make them feel otherwise. So, sorry if that came out wrong, that was not my intention at all.”
However, Biles didn’t appear to accept the apology as she went on to post a Thread around the same time that read: “Not everyone needs a mic and a platform.”
After going on to win the gold medal, Biles explained that the medal “means the world.”
“We’re super excited,” she said. “We’re honored to represent the US every time we get on a world stage, but accomplishing that gold and that goal was just an amazing feeling.”
“I think we all had something to prove from Tokyo and tonight we did just that. It means the world. This was our goal going in, even though we didn’t share it with everybody because it’s just a personal thing that we were working on.
“But I think for everybody, it’s what we came here to do. And we’re super excited to walk away with that gold medal.”
