Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles apologized for getting private in an online clash with right-wing activist Riley Gaines and additional clarified her statements on transgender athletes.
Biles’ apology comes after Gaines, a 25-year-old former swimmer, focused a highschool softball participant who’s trans in Minnesota on X. Biles referred to as out Gaines for bullying whereas making an attempt to defend the athlete.
“I’ve all the time believed aggressive fairness & inclusivity are each important in sport. The present system doesn’t adequately steadiness these necessary rules, which frequently results in frustration and heated exchanges, and it didn’t assist for me to get private with Riley, which I apologize for,” Biles wrote on Tuesday. “These are delicate, difficult points that I really don’t have the solutions or options to, however I consider it begins with empathy and respect. I used to be not advocating for insurance policies that compromise equity in girls’s sports activities. My objection is to be singling out kids for public scrutiny in ways in which really feel private and dangerous.”
“Particular person athletes—particularly children—ought to by no means be the main focus of criticism of a flawed system they haven’t any management over,” Biles continued. “I consider sports activities organizations have a accountability to provide you with guidelines supporting inclusion whereas sustaining honest competitors. All of us desire a future for sport that’s honest, inclusive, and respectful. Xoxo Simone.”
On Friday, Gaines identified that the feedback on a publish celebrating a highschool softball staff had been turned off.
“To be anticipated when your star participant is a boy,” she wrote.
Biles stepped in in protection of the teenage trans athlete with a number of tweets.
“bully somebody your personal measurement, which might paradoxically be a male,” Biles wrote.
In a separate post, Biles referred to Gaines as “really sick” and a “sore loser,” referencing a 200-yard swimming freestyle race in 2022 through which Gaines tied for fifth place with Lia Thomas, an athlete who’s trans. The race skyrocketed Gaines to popularity amongst many right-wingers.
“Try to be uplifting the trans group and maybe discovering a approach to make sports activities inclusive OR creating a brand new avenue the place trans really feel protected in sports activities. Possibly a transgender class IN ALL sports activities,” Biles added. “However as a substitute… You bully them… One issues for certain is nobody in sports activities is protected with you round!!!!!”
Gaines said she was dissatisfied by Biles’ feedback and doubled down on her anti-trans stance.
“It’s not my job or the job of any lady to determine the way to embody males in our areas,” Gaines wrote. “You possibly can uplift males stealing championships in girls’s sports activities with YOUR platform. Males don’t belong in girls’s sports activities and I say that with my full chest.”
On Tuesday, Gaines accepted Biles’ apology in a lengthy post on X.
“Sports activities ARE inclusive by nature. Anybody can and everybody SHOULD play sports activities. Competitors, alternatively and by definition, is unique. So the concept of ‘aggressive fairness’ is nonsensical,” Gaines mentioned.
She additionally baselessly claimed that trans athletes are harming or abusing ladies.
“You possibly can’t have any empathy and compassion for the women when you’re ignoring when younger males are harming or abusing them. I’m not ashamed to be a voice for the unvoiced,” Gaines wrote earlier than proudly proclaiming her assist for President Donald Trump and stating her lawsuit with a number of different athletes in opposition to the NCAA.
Gaines didn’t handle singling out the trans highschool softball participant.
Regardless of NCAA President Charlie Baker claiming in testimony in entrance of a Senate panel in December 2024 that he’s conscious of fewer than 10 college-aged trans scholar athletes within the U.S., conservatives have hyper-fixated on trans athletes as some type of detriment to girls’s rights and sports activities groups.
In February, Trump signed an executive order prohibiting “male aggressive participation in girls’s sports activities.” The order establishes the appropriate to “rescind all funds from academic packages that deprive girls and ladies of honest athletic alternatives.”
California and a successful highschool trans athlete within the state have lately drawn the ire of Trump, who has threatened to withhold funding primarily based on his government order.
