Simone Biles and ESPN Face Backlash over ESPY Awards Remarks

The gymnast who until recently was America’s darling and a symbol of perseverance, 11-time Olympic medal winner Simone Biles, won the award for “Best Championship Performance” for her 2024 Olympics all-around gold medal performance. She couldn’t help but throw in some divisive rhetoric into her acceptance speech, however:

“That was very unexpected, especially in a category of all men. So thank you guys so much,” she said with a laugh.

ESPN of course loved the moment:

“Simone Biles is HER.” What exactly does that even mean? Clearly, they think demeaning female athletes is something to be celebrated.

It may have seemed like an innocuous joke, and I’m all for defusing conflict with humor, but Biles was obviously throwing shade at former Kentucky swim star Riley Gaines and other advocates of keeping biological males out of women’s sports. Biles famously came out of nowhere in June to slam Gaines on social media for daring to take a stand on the issue by relentlessly pointing out how unfair and anti-women the practice is.