It shouldn’t matter than cute little Simone Biles isn’t very bright. She’s a talented gymnast, and has parlayed that skill into a fortune, a brand, and enough fame to last her a while. There was that choking episode at the 2020 Olympics, but never mind: she’s won enough championships and medals to qualify as one of the all-time greats.
Unfortunately, Biles, like so many other jocks and celebrities,, has let her popularity and acclaim in a very narrow field go to her head. She thinks she has something to contribute to national debates that have nothing to do with floor exercises and the balance beam, and she doesn’t. I’d love to know what books, if any, Biles has read while being essentially a full time gymnast since she was knee-high to a praying mantis. The fact that she never attended high school (she was home-schooled) and eventually got a college degree from a non-profit, online college doesn’t mean Simone necessarily is lacking in critical thinking skills, but her engaging in a name-calling battle with Riley Gaines—the former competitive swimmer who has become a critic of trans men who still have to shave every morning throttling girls and women in women’s sports because they can— does.
To begin with, Gaines is smart, articulate and knows her topic. Biles’ contribution to the debate has consisted of social media posts the equivalent of “Oh yeah?” and “Well, I’m better at my sport than you were at yours, so there!” Here’s one…
Dumb, and in so many ways. Yes, Gaines, like other female athletes, legitimately resented losing races to a competitor who had unfair advantages and shouldn’t have been allowed to compete. Biles is making the fatuous and corrupting argument that we should shrug off cheating. Why should Riley Gaines be “uplifting the trans community”? Her mission is protecting integrity in women’s sports, and the transmania embraced by the Left undermines it. Biles makes it clear here that she is ignorant of the controversy she’s participating in: restricting trans athletes to their own (tiny) category would not be sufficiently “inclusive” for them, as anyone paying attention to LGBTQ manifestos knows. Biles also defaults to the censorious device, popular on the Left, of designating all criticism no matter how justified as “bullying.” If anyone has been bullied, it’s Riley Gaines. Campus protesters have blocked her from speaking, and TikTok pulled her sports attire company’s ads.
Ah, but what Simone Biles is really interested in is money, and her agent or publicist apparently sat her down and explained that obnoxious, juvenile tweets were not a good look for an aging athlete whose income increasingly depends on widespread popularity. So, having no integrity herself, Biles released a classic “Never mind!” pseudo apology that made no more sense than that tweet above. Here you go…
“I wanted to follow up from my last tweets. I’ve always believed competitive equity & inclusivity are both essential in sport. The current system doesn’t adequately balance these important principles, which often leads to frustration and heated exchanges, and it didn’t help for me to get personal with Riley, which I apologize for. These are sensitive, complicated issues that I truly don’t have the answers or solutions to, but I believe it starts with empathy and respect. I was not advocating for policies that compromise fairness in women’s sports. My objection is to be singling out children for public scrutiny in ways that feel personal and harmful. Individual athletes — especially kids — should never be the focus of criticism of a flawed system they have no control over. I believe sports organizations have a responsibility to come up with rules supporting inclusion while maintaining fair competition. We all want a future for sport that is fair, inclusive, and respectful.
Xoxo Simone
To begin with, this is a non-apology apology, no better than a #9 on the Apology Scale. She’s sorry for “getting personal’: she called Gaines sick, a bully, a loser, and a menace. The rest of the statement is “Imagine”-level blather.
What does “competitive level equity and inclusion” in sports even mean? When inclusion means including competitors who have an unfair advantage over others, it’s impossible to have “equity,” because that situation is intrinsically unfair. If Biles admits that she doesn’t have answers, and she doesn’t have the skills to develop any, why did she attack Gaines for her answer, which was and is, “Don’t let biological men compete with women in women’s sports”?
“I was not advocating for policies that compromise fairness in women’s sports,” Biles writes. She certainly was! Biles was virtue-signaling to the Woke and Wonderful without thinking about the implications of what she was saying. Then she defaults to “Think of the children!” which is a non sequitur. Riley Gains wasn’t defeated by a trans child, she was beaten by a male post-puberty swimmer who decided he could be a champion as a self-declared woman. Lia Thomas wasn’t and isn’t a child: she was over 18 when she throttled all female swimmers in the Ivy League while retaining her man-parts.
Then Simone ends with nonsense: she wants inclusion and fairness. They are mutually exclusive in this case. She uses “respectful” as a talisman rather than considering what it means. There is no reason to respect cheaters; they shouldn’t be respected. I’m happy to respect Lia Thomas as a human being, once she stops cheating.
After all this, we are back to giving Simone Biles credit for what she is, while hoping that she recognizes her limitations. These include public policy, ethics, rhetoric, logic and analyzing any problem that can’t be solved with some effective coaching and a good rub-down.
Ethics Alarms 
Indeed, Simone doesn’t know what it’s like to be beaten by a man posing as a woman. Ironic that the Communist bloc countries sending big bulky men to compete in women’s sports would be considered progressive and inclusive today. Back then, it was just cheating.
” … that choking episode in the 2020 Olympics … .”
Please help me understand how it is wrong for a professional athlete to contribute to a national debate that has nothing to do with her sport while it is okay for someone with no known expertise in gymnastics to repeat a wrong analysis of an incident (not an episode) in that sport.
She did not choke. She correctly analyzed her situation and took appropriate action. She has been supported in that incident by professional athletes in gymnastics and other sports involving similar aerial maneuvers.
Do we have strict lanes we are obliged to stay within as a matter of ethics, or not?
She choked. She came up with a rationalization that everybody bought, but if a male athlete begged out of a high profile competition the way she did, he would be condemned for choking. She was in a slump, her confidence was shot, and came up with a serviceable way to avoid failure. No Kari Strugg she. Or Curt Schilling.
Hey, she can opine on anything she wants, if she can articulate a valid argument and support it. She didn’t and apparently can’t. Celebrities whose opinions are no more interesting or well-considered than what you hear at the corner bar should not tempt the media into publicizing them beyond their worth.
“Biles withdrew from several events in Tokyo after experiencing the “twisties,” a mental health block gymnasts grapple with when they lose control of their bodies mid-air.
She stumbled in the vault competion and did not participate in the team final.”
Simone Biles fires back at critics saying she ‘choked’ with ‘twisties’
I would say that a mental health block when one feels not in control is by definition “choking”.
Choking occurs when you are so overcome with trepidation that something could go wrong it invariable does because you are afraid of failure. The greatest athletes have the confidence to win despite a setback.
It appears that winning was so important to her that the setback caused her to lose confidence in her abilities that she decided not to compete. That might not be clinical choking because she did not compete thus she could not fail but she failed her team just as much as a anyone else who is afraid of a challenge to overcome and lets others down.
“It appears that winning was so important to her that the setback caused her to lose confidence in her abilities that she decided not to compete.”
We apply “choking” to shame someone for not “the show must go on” without regard to their health. However, consider Conor McGregor in the MMA world he fought without any indication that his lower leg would snap clean in half. Without any warning signs to the contrary, he kicked his opponent and his leg snapped. Would we then say, “ooooh poor baby, loser, get up an fight until you are knocked out.”?
I understand that on the surface the Biles/McGreggor comparison may seem mismatched. However, I am trying to impute to Biles credit for an awareness that McGreggor did not have priveledge to.
If Biles had zero indication of something wrong, attempted her stunts and broke her neck to then be quadraplegic, we would say something sympathetic. But if Biles understands the precision of body and mind that must be in unity to avoid catastrophic injury and backs down from competition for safety reasons, we critisize? If McGreggor had undergone a Dexa body composition scan prior to a fight and the bone density indicated something abnormal in the weakend leg and futher testing indicated that any strike given or received would likely snap the leg, would we then call him a coward for backing out of a fight for a medical reason?
Though my reasonable cyncism does agree with “It appears that winning was so important to her…” so she, the coach and the team made a strategic competition/brand decision which merits a itsy bitsy teenie weenie amount of humility going forward like maybe a lowercase goat instead of uppercase
There is nothing wrong with taking her explanation at face value, though my problem with it remains that she took advantage of a double standard: male athletes who plead injuries or other reason not to compete in high profile competitions where they are expected to shine or their team depends on them will be criticized and their reputations permanently scarred. Cute little female athletes can count on the “AWWWW!” factor, and Biles played the role to the hilt.
If women want respect and “equality” in sports, they can’t have it both ways. Biles had a financial motivation to avoid defeat: that’s a fact. Going back in Olympics history, several female gymnasts who misfired in the Games found their celebrity and marketability immediately diminished. Biles’ attempted flip-flop regarding her Gaines insults only reinforces my conviction that her “twisties” were a ploy. And as Harry Reid will agree from his fiery lake in Hell, “It worked!”
Bingo. Exactly.
Her intelligence could rightly be questioned in that she didn’t foresee the avalanche of responses of the “We don’t see YOU competing against men!” variety. She didn’t qualify on the uneven bars…the one event in the four women’s artistic gymnastics events that requires more upper-body strength…..like ohhhh, MEN have.
Retractions are always a great source of hilarity. Her PR firm appears to have decided a big helping of Authentic Frontier Gibberish was just what the doctor had ordered, and they served up a banquet. Pretty darned good ghost-writing, I’d say. And not a bad strategy. The retraction actually sounds as if she wrote it herself.
Indeed. I suspect the hugs and kisses at the end were her contribution.
jvb
But those hugs and kisses made everything better and gave me such a warm and snuggly feeling…
…in my butt!!!
According to the internet, she has a XO inner lip tatoo!
Oh, the mind boggles.
jvb
The Babylon Bee nailed it with criticism of Biles: https://babylonbee.com/news/simone-biles-calls-for-all-female-athletes-to-give-up-like-she-did
For those unfamiliar, it is a satire website. Often with right leaning, pro christian and self deprecating satire about both.
Honestly, I felt it was obvious what Biles was doing in 2020, and it amazes me that so many people just swallowed whole her convenient excuse for bailing on her team. Again, a male athlete doing that would be disgraced. Biles just got credulous sympathy…and STILL does.
I can see Roy Hobbs now, telling Wilfred Brimley that he can’t play in the crucial game, because that old bullet wound is really bothering him…And there’s Red Pollard, who rode Seabiscuit’s climactic race despite a shattered leg, when doctors said he was risking ever walking again. Lots of others, of course.
“Lots of others, of course.”
Willis Reed in game 7 of the 1970 NBA Finals.
PWS
Great example.
Of course, I neglected to mention Kirk Gibson limping up to the plate in the World Series and hitting a game winning pinch home run…
A pearl of (IMO) infinite wisdom from Jim Hodgson that’s stuck with me: “You’re Never Ready, It’s Just Your Turn.”
Some people (Reed, Gibson, et al) damn the torpedoes; others fall back on the Loser’s Limp.
PWS