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1 month ago
13 MyKayla Skinner is throwing herself at the feet of Simone Biles!
Back in June, MyKayla sparked major controversy in the gymnastics community by criticizing athletes of her former sport while watching the Olympic trials. She claimed that aside from Simone, girls just don’t have “the talent and the depth” or the “work ethic” like they used to — blaming this largely on the US Center for SafeSport, an organization helping to prevent abuse against athletes. Like, WTF?!
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She later apologized, and things seemed — well, if not all good then at least peaceful. That is until Simone and her teammates Suni Lee, Jordan Chiles, Jade Carey, and Hezly Rivera won the gold medal in the team finals at the Paris games. Simone hit back at MyKayla in the caption of her celebratory post, causing tons of other athletes and celebs to reflect on the ex-gymnast’s diss, too. All this renewed attention caused MyKayla to block Biles — and now she’s calling out the 27-year-old for encouraging cyberbullying. OMG!
MyKayla took to her Instagram to share a video on Tuesday, in which she BLASTED the Courage to Soar author for her shady caption. She complained:
“I sincerely hoped that this topic wouldn’t need to be revisited but unfortunately things have really gotten out of hand lately. 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 cyber bullying or even worse. 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.”
Cyberbullying and threats are NEVER okay — especially directed toward children who had literally nothing to do with this scandal! But let’s be clear. Simone didn’t start this — MyKayla did. And she knows it. Emotionally, she acknowledged her role in the drama, adding:
“So why I’m here is because about four weeks ago, I made a comment about work ethic and what seems to be taking place with the rising generation. To be totally clear, I take 100 percent responsibility for poorly articulating the point I was trying to make and the last thing I wanted was to cause harm or offend our U.S. Olympic team. I know these women are incredible — the very best of the best — and almost all of them are my former teammates who I have enjoyed very much cheering on the last few years.”
OMG, “poorly articulating the point” she still can’t hold herself accountable. She’s trying to say she said they didn’t have the talent in a GOOD way. Please.
That said, she believes the Simone Biles Rising star is now the one to blame for the negativity she’s dealing with online — and she’s especially pissed about it because she thought they were cool. MyKayla explained:
“I posted a video apology on Instagram and I followed up with a written apology and I sent individual messages to each of the women on the team. Only Simone had responded and she told me that she was proud of me. You guys can imagine my surprise last week when I was celebrating our team winning gold just to see this brought up all over again by a caption on an Instagram post. 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.”
Soooo, is that why she blocked Simone?? She was salty? Guess so! But now, she’s turning to her former teammate for help, concluding with a plea:
“To Simone, I am asking you directly and publicly to please put a stop to this. 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.”
If only she’d just supported these athletes from the very start then this wouldn’t be a problem to begin with. Just saying! Finishing off her post, she captioned it:
“I love our country and don’t want to take anything away from our athletes. Let’s use this time to build each other up, not tear others down.”
See her full post (below):
Guess she’s just realizing that words do have consequences! It’s good to see her owning up to her mistakes. As we said, absolutely no one should face bullying online — especially threats of violence! That’s always uncalled for! But let this be a lesson for MyKayla, too. If you don’t have something nice to say, maybe don’t say anything at all. It’s as simple as that! So far, Simone hasn’t responded to the plea.
Thoughts, Perezcious readers? Sound OFF (below)!
[Image via MEGA/WENN & MyKayla Skinner/Instagram]
