Simone Biles Deletes X Account Following Online Transgender Feud
Riley Gaines weighs in on Olympian leaving social media.
Taylor Hill/Taylor Hill/FilmMagic
Olympic hero Simone Biles appears to have deleted her X account after receiving a backlash for publicly supporting a transgender teen athlete.
On Sunday, Biles, who had 1.9 million followers, seemed to have deactivated her X account. Only the error message ‘Something went wrong’ was visible.
Simone Biles' X account is now blank.
screen grab
Earlier this month Biles took on conservative activist and former swimmer Riley Gaines in what became a social media pile-on.
Gaines had called out a Minnesota high school softball team that featured a transgender teen, Marissa Rothenberger.
The school turned off all comments on a social media photo that featured Rothenberger lining up with teammates to celebrate winning a state championship, which saw Gaines post: “To be expected when your star player is a boy.”
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Biles weighed in, supporting the teen and posting to Gaines, “All of this campaigning because you lost a race. Straight up sore loser.”
Simone Biles hinted that her Olympic career may be over.
Tom Weller/VOIGT/Getty Images
Gaines had competed against trans swimmer Lia Thomas in 2022. Biles called Gaines “truly sick” for her comments and said: “You should be uplifting the trans community and perhaps finding a way to make sports inclusive OR creating a new avenue where trans feel safe in sports... But instead... You bully them... One things for sure is no one in sports is safe with you around!!!!!”
In another post, Biles said to Gaines, “Bully someone your own size, which would ironically be a male.”
Right-wing social media accounts supported Gaines and attacked Biles, who is the most decorated gymnast in history.
After a four-day silence, Biles apologized to Gaines. She wrote, “I wanted to follow up from my last tweets. I’ve always believed competitive equity & inclusivity are both essential in sport.”
Social media influencer and former athlete Riley Gaines.
Kevin Mohatt/REUTERS
She continued, “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.”
Gaines replied, “I accept Simone’s apology for the personal attacks including the ones where she body-shamed me. I know she knows what this feels like. She’s still the greatest female gymnast of all time. A couple of things. Sports ARE inclusive by nature. Anyone can and everyone SHOULD play…’
After Biles’ X account disappeared on Sunday, Gaines returned to the social media platform to gloat.
She posted that the Olympian’s account vanishing occurred after Biles had “an incredibly unpopular and morally indefensible take”, and that she was “rightfully ridiculed for it”.
She noted Biles had issued “a groveling public apology after unrelenting backlash” and deleted her account “to pretend it never happened.”
“Sad to see such a phenom go down like this,” she added.
Biles’ agent has been contacted for comment.
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