Simone Biles’ painful history with MyKayla Skinner coincided with Larry Nasser abuse, ‘toxic’ Karolyi culture

If Simone Biles did in fact use a celebratory Instagram post to fire back at former teammate MyKayla Skinner Tuesday night, after she led the U.S. women’s gymnastics team to gold at the 2024 Paris Olympics, she had very good reasons.

They include the likelihood that Skinner’s hurtful comments over the past month, deriding Team USA’s “work ethic,” offered a painful reminder to Biles and other gymnasts of a recent dark past in their sport’s history. That’s when the public learned about rampant sexual abuse committed against Biles and other female athletes by former national team doctor Larry Nasser. Around the same time, the public began to find out about the oppressive, Nasser-enabling culture created by Romanian coaching icons Martha and Bela Karolyi at their training facility in rural Texas.

Following Tuesday night’s victory in Paris, Biles shared a carousel of Instagram images of her and her teammates, Suni Lee, Hezly Rivera, Jade Carey and Jordan Chiles, raising an American flag to celebrate their win. Biles, who earned her fifth gold medal, captioned her post, “lack of talent, lazy, olympic champions.”

With this comment, Biles appeared to take direct aim at Skinner’s comments in a since-deleted YouTube video from late last month, Page Six reported. On Wednesday, Biles told her 1.7 million followers on X that she had been blocked, TMZ reported. While she didn’t name names, the assumption is that she was blocked by Skinner.

In Skinner’s controversial video, she briefly, if perfunctorily, praised Biles, Us Weekly reported. Skinner was an alternate for the U.S. team at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, when Biles won four gold medals, including for the all-around competition. She took Biles’ place in the final vault competition at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. She won silver, after Biles withdrew from the games, citing mental health and physical safety concerns.

Skinner asserted that Biles’ current team members lacked the talent, depth and “work ethic” of years past. Skinner made things worse when she tried to bolster her case by complaining that the U.S. Center for SafeSport supposedly made it harder for coaches to push their athletes to Olympic levels.

The independent nonprofit was founded in 2017 to reduce sexual, physical and emotional abuse of minors and athletes in U.S. Olympic sports. It was created as USA gymnastics faced a reckoning over reports of widespread sexual abuse by coaches, gym owners and staff working for gymnastics programs across the country. A central figure in this scandal was Nasser, the Michigan State osteopathic physician, who was accused of sexually assaulting more than 260 female gymnasts, including Biles, Aly Raisman, McKayla Maroney, Maggie Nichols and Gabby Douglas. In 2017 and 2018, he pleaded guilty to federal charges of child pornography and state charges of first-degree sexual assault, and received sentences of 60 years in prison plus another 80 to 300 years.

In her video, Skinner didn’t address Nasser’s sexual abuse when she said this about SafeSport: “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.”

Skinner subsequently removed the YouTube video after facing pushback from Biles and others associated with the current team, Us Weekly reported. Biles subtly wrote on Threads, “Not everyone needs a mic and a platform.” Gina Chiles, the mother of Jordan Chiles, wrote on X: “Whoa. She really said that out loud and posted it. That’s something.”

Skinner also apologized in an Instagram Story and claimed her comments were “misinterpreted” and “misunderstood,” Us Weekly reported. But she again poured the proverbial salt into very deep wounds by suggesting she appreciated aspects of gymnasts’ work ethic “in the Martha (Karolyi) era.”

“I’m not sticking up for Martha or saying what she did was good,” Skinner said in her Instagram apology. “I’m just saying it was different. So sorry for anything that got out of context or seemed hurtful.”

Subsequent investigative reporting by the Associated Press, ESPN’s 30 for 30 podcast and other outlets showed that Nasser’s abuse was enabled by the “toxic,” authoritarian gymnastics culture created by former national coaches Martha and Bela Karolyi. The husband-and-wife duo reportedly expected young athletes under their control to be silent and obedient, as they also endured rigorous training, painful injuries, near-starvation diets and regular taunts about their performance and weight.

Martha Karolyi ran the women’s national team for 15 years, and she’s credited with taking the program to its greatest heights before stepping down after the 2016 Rio Games, an ESPN 30 for 30 podcast report said. But she also amassed great, unchecked power within the sport, which allowed her to handpick the national teams and control the athletes and their individual coaches, ESPN also said.

“She was the decider of our fate,” 2012 Olympic gold medalist Jordyn Wieber told ESPN.

Biles didn’t have much good to say about the Martha Karolyi’s coaching style in that ESPN report, which focused on how she was determined to change the culture of gymnastics. For one thing, Biles and her family tried to keep her away as much as possible from the Karolyis’ Texas training facility, as she developed into a powerhouse gymnast.

When a then-13-year-old Biles was first invited to the remote training facility, known as the Karolyi ranch, in 2011, she was excited. Aimee Boorman, her coach at the time, thought it could be “a turning point” in her career.

“Then Martha just railed at her, said she wasn’t working hard enough and that she wasn’t good enough,” Boorman told ESPN. “Simone was devastated because what Martha had to say to these girls made such a huge impact on them.

Biles herself said, “It’s hard being young and having someone tell you that you’re not good enough when you feel like you’re trying your hardest. I was not about that. That was not a lot of fun.”

Biles had to return to the ranch when she made the junior and senior national teams. She led the U.S. team to a gold medal at the 2016 Olympics and won individual three other gold medals for the all-around, floor and vault competitions. She said she still faced Karolyi’s wrath because she won bronze for balance beam.

A month after the 2016 Olympics, the Nasser scandal began to break. The Indianapolis Star first reported that two former athletes had accused Nassar of sexual abuse, ESPN said.

Biles, who had taken a break from competing, stayed silent, ESPN said. But in January 2018, as Biles contemplated her return to competitive gymnastics, she revealed on Twitter that she too had survived Nassar’s abuse. She also disclosed that the abuse took place at the Karolyi ranch. Three days later, USAG closed the Ranch facility and cut ties with the Karolyis.