Simone Biles isn’t going to let her critics make her really feel baaaa-d.
On Thursday, the Staff USA gymnast made historical past on the 2024 Paris Olympics by successful her second all-around gold medal. The win makes Biles the third lady, after Larisa Latynina in 1956 and 1960, and Věra Čáslavská in 1964 and 1968, to win the ladies’s particular person all-around twice. The three-time Olympian has now received a complete of 9 Olympic medals, with Thursday’s win being her sixth gold, which is extra medals than another American gymnast ever.
So to rejoice, Biles determined to sport slightly bling with a reasonably loaded message: a necklace with a bedazzled silver goat pendant.
Ya know, simply to remind everybody that she is the G.O.A.T., the best of all time.
When a reporter requested the athlete about her necklace after the occasion, Biles famous that a lot of her followers usually name her “the goat.”
“So I assumed it could be actually particular if I received one made — and the haters hate it, so I really like that much more,” Biles stated.
Biles then defined that she additionally has a stuffed goat toy in her room within the Olympic village.
“Simply to get a reminder which you could go on the market, you are able to do it, you’ve performed it earlier than. So, let’s go,” she stated.
Tom Weller/VOIGT by way of Getty Pictures
In 2021, Biles obtained unfair criticism when she pulled out of the Tokyo Video games over “psychological well being” issues and since she received a case of “the twisties,” a situation during which athletes briefly lose their sense of spatial consciousness whereas midair. On the time, some conservatives — together with now-vice presidential nominee JD Vance — tried to spin Biles’ want for self-care right into a “tradition conflict” speaking level. The “Hillbilly Elegy” creator criticized those that supported or resonated with Biles’ determination by calling them “bizarre” for turning “a really tragic second” into “this act of heroism.”
“And I feel it displays fairly poorly on our kind of therapeutic society that we attempt to reward folks not for moments of power, not for moments of heroism, however for his or her weakest moments,” Vance added.
Patrick Smith by way of Getty Pictures
Biles has additionally been engaged in some on-line drama along with her former teammate MyKayla Skinner earlier than and through the Paris Olympics. Final month, Skinner gave a unflattering evaluate of this yr’s ladies’s gymnastics workforce by criticizing their “work ethic.”
“Apart from Simone, I really feel just like the expertise and the depth simply isn’t what it was once,” she stated in a since-deleted YouTube video, parts of which could be discovered right here.
Days later, Biles seemingly responded to Skinner’s adverse tackle this yr’s Staff USA.
“not everybody wants a mic and a platform,” she wrote on Threads.