Simone Biles is the GOAT in every sense of the word.
The seven-time Olympic champion stood up for transgender athletes Friday night, taking to X to chastise Riley Gaines for the relentless verbal abuse she directs at transgender girls and women.
“You’re truly sick, all of this campaigning because you lost a race. Straight up sore loser,” Biles wrote. “You should be uplifting the trans community and perhaps finding a way to make sports more inclusive OR creating a new avenue where trans feel safe in sports. Maybe a transgender category in ALL SPORTS!!
“But instead… You bully them…” Biles continued. “One thing for sure is no one in sports is safe with you around!!!!!”
Biles then added in a second post, “Bully someone your own size, which would ironically be a male.”
Gaines replied that Biles’ post was “so disappointing.” Which is just further proof that Gaines needs to get out of her right-wing bubble a bit more.
Anyone who is even slightly familiar with Biles knows she is an ally. Of her teammates. Of her competitors. Of sexual abuse survivors. And unabashedly of the LGBTQ community.
She also has little use for anyone who punches down on others, which is Gaines’ specialty.
Gaines has used her tie for fifth place with Lia Thomas, a transgender woman, in the 200-yard freestyle at the 2022 NCAA championships to become a MAGA media darling. But her grifting has done real harm to the transgender community, which is already at an elevated risk for suicide and self-harm.
There is no scientific evidence that transgender women athletes have a physical advantage over cisgender women athletes, but that hasn’t stopped Gaines from claiming they do. She insists they are “robbing” cisgender women of places on the podium, and she doesn’t care if it’s a 12- or 22-year-old that she’s putting in harm’s way in this overheated climate where ignorance and violence are celebrated equally.
Gaines has publicly lobbied for Biles and Caitlin Clark to support her in her hate which, again, is a laughable idea to anyone who has followed Biles’ illustrious career.
Biles is the most decorated gymnast of all time, man or woman, with 11 medals at the Olympics — seven of them gold — and 30 at the world championships. She has five skills named after her, two each on vault and floor exercise and one on balance beam. She has taken the idea that women’s gymnastics was a sport reserved for the young and turned it on its head, still dominating in her late 20s.
That has not spared Biles from the venom of keyboard warriors like Gaines, however. She was criticized for withdrawing during the team finals at the Tokyo Olympics because of a case of “the twisties,” never minding that not knowing where she was in the air meant she very well could have landed on her neck instead of her feet. She’s taken heat for her hair, her marriage, even her self-confidence.
But you don’t accomplish what Biles has without being fearless, and her admonishment of Gaines on Friday night was yet another example.
Gaines had inserted herself into the conversation about the Class 4A softball championship in Minnesota, claiming Champlin Park had “hijacked” the title because its star pitcher is a transgender young woman. Never mind that there are nine players on a softball team and Champlin Park won the title game 6-0.
Or that her teammates “love having her out there. She’s a great kid and a great teammate.”
Gaines has never let facts get in her way, so she posted three times about it in a two-hour span. Made sure to mention the name of the transgender athlete, as well, while purposely misgendering her.
That was enough for Biles. That high school junior in Minnesota and all the other transgender women Gaines demonizes might not have platforms large enough to counter her vitriol, but Biles does. And she was happy to put it to good use.
Most of us could never do what Biles does as a gymnast. But we can do what she does as a human: Be kind. Defend the most marginalized.
And when you get the opportunity to stick up to a bully, do it at full throat.
In a world of Riley Gaineses, be a Simone Biles.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.
