Former gymnast MyKayla Skinner sends desperate message to US legend Simone Biles

A former gymnast has made an emotional and desperate plea to US legend Simone Biles after finding herself in the middle of an online storm and receiving death threats.

MyKayla Skinner, 27, was a teammate of Biles in Tokyo and won a silver medal in the vault after Biles shock departure from those Olympic Games.

But Skinner made headlines in June this year when the US selected its team for Paris.

During those trials, Skinner was on YouTube sharing her live reactions to the team (the video has since been deleted) and she said, “I feel like the talent and the depth just isn’t what it used to be ...”

Skinner also added: “Obviously a lot of the girls don’t work as hard,” but it was relatively clear she was not including Biles in that controversial observation.

After winning the team gold medal in Paris, Biles posted a photo to Instagram with the caption, “lack of talent, lazy, olympic champions,” which appeared to allude to contentious Skinner comments.

And following that Biles post, Skinner now says she is being attacked.

She says she has become the subject of “cyberbullying or even worse,” and comments have included “death threats” directed at her and her family.

“To Simone, I am asking you directly and publicly to please put a stop to this,” Skinner said in a video posted on Tuesday.

“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.”

Skinner said the resurgence of criticism had taken a toll on her well-being and asked, “Please at this point, I’m just asking for it to stop for the sake of my family because enough is enough.”

A few days after her comments in June, Skinner posted an apology on social media.

“I want to formally apologise to Team USA and our gymnastic community for my comments during my recent YouTube episodes,” Skinner said on X.

“It was not my intention to offend or disrespect any of the athletes or to take away from their hard work.”

While she had noted in her deleted video that Biles was an exception to her criticism of the team’s work ethic, she nonetheless faced swift backlash for disparaging the dedication, physical appearance and depth of the rest of the US team.

Her comment that the 2021 Olympic all-around champion Suni Lee did not have a “gymnastics body” attracted particular scrutiny, as well as an assertion that SafeSport, an organisation established in response to the Larry Nassar sexual abuse scandal to prevent future abuse, was in part to blame for what she viewed as a decline in the coaching quality in the sport.

Nassar was convicted in 2018 of molesting hundreds of young girls and sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison.

Biles, who has said she is among the hundreds of survivors of Nassar’s abuse, unfollowed Skinner on social media in the days after her original comments.

Skinner said on Monday that she sent personal text messages to current team members before the Olympics, again apologising for her comments.

“Only Simone had responded and she told me that she was proud of me ...,” Skinner said.

“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,” Skinner said in her Instagram video.

After Biles’ Instagram post last week, Skinner reportedly blocked the 11-time Olympic medallist on social media.

“Simone’s latest post and others that followed it fueled another wave of hateful comments, DMs, articles and emails.,” Skinner said of Biles’ apparent clapback.

Skinner also faced scrutiny in 2016 for sharing an altered photo of Gabby Douglas that some described as racist. The edited photo implied that Skinner should have made the 2016 US Olympic team over Douglas, who became the first black Olympic all-around champion in 2012.

Skinner was named an alternate, but did not get the chance to compete in Rio.

She qualified for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics as an individual competitor for the US, meaning she was not a part of the Olympic team that won silver there.

At first, she failed to qualify for any Tokyo apparatus finals, but Biles’ withdrawal from the vault final gave Skinner the opportunity to compete.

After Tokyo, she retired from elite gymnastics and gave birth to a daughter in September.

- With NBC