Simone Biles issued an apology to Riley Gaines

And now the gender people are big mad. No apologizing to "transphobes!"

The saga continues.

I’ll catch you all up.

Out of nowhere, on Friday June 6, Simone Biles — gymnastics GOAT and 11 time Olympic medalist (7 gold, 2 silver, and 2 bronze across three Olympic games) — tweeted at Riley Gaines. She called Gaines a bully, sore loser and “sick.”

Then, in a follow up tweet, Biles basically suggested Gaines was manly because . . . she has muscles? Like Biles?

Chaos ensued in the twitter-verse. Except Biles said nothing.

The whole thing was odd, which is why people were speculating that Simone didn’t actually do the tweeting. That it was some kind of reverse publicity stunt to stir up interest in her new Netflix special. Who knows.

She doesn’t tweet much and then she tweeted that! Why? (I do think it was her. And even if it wasn’t, it was from her handle and she didn’t disavow it so it was her for all intents and purposes.)

I don’t think Simone expected any pushback. She’s famous. She probably hangs out with people who agree with her (or are paid to pretend to) about everything. They probably spew Dem taglines like “Trans women are women” and “Trump is an existential threat to Democracy!” and that amounts to being politically savvy and informed.

Well, she got pushback. And let’s be clear, 80% of Americans agree that women’s sports should be for women. So it should have been expected. Granted, most are quiet about it so it may not seem like we are the majority. But we are.

That said, I suppose it would be easy to lull yourself into believing that we’re all just being mean to trans identified males by saying SAVE WOMEN’S SPORTS. Because that’s what the legacy media says. That’s what Nancy Armour at USA Today says. That’s what the IOC said at last summer’s Olympics in Paris. It’s confusing!

Well, Biles reps some pretty huge brands. Brands like Athleta (the athletic apparel brand from Gap, Inc), United Airlines and Uber Eats. Certainly all of these brands — as big as they are — draw from consumers of all political persuasions. Certainly all of these brands do not want to be “Bud Light’ed” because Simone went on a poorly thought through tweet spree.

So I’m figuring there was an emergency meeting amongst the PR ladies. And they decided to issue this statement from Simone’s X account today.

So many things to say.

1. There is no such thing as “competitive equity.” Competition means unequal outcomes. And I’m sure Simone knows that and doesn’t want to give up her 30 World Championship medals. Which she earned.

2. These issues may be sensitive but they aren’t complicated. There are two sexes. Everyone can be included in sports. Compete in men’s if you’re male and women’s if you’re female.

3. At least the original inciting tweets sounded like an actual human! This robot-like pablum is embarrassing from someone who always claims to be “authentically” herself.

4. It is the fault of the sports governing bodies. I agree. But boys who are 17 who choose to compete in girls’ and steal a scholarship spot from a girl are also accountable. If they are old enough to “change sex” they are old enough to endure some heat. They are cheating. And certainly Imane Khelif, a 26-year-old man pretending to be a woman and beating women up in the boxing ring deserves — and can handle — some criticism for his cheating ways.

5. Such a bad ChatGPT driven statement from the PR ladies in corporate. Just jamming all the words in there, in no particular order, trying to make amends but saying absolutely nothing. Pure gibberish.

6. And now! Biles has just pissed off the “trans” activist class. Man, they are mad over on Bluesky!

Oh boy. Just say what you think. Speak the truth. Stop worrying about placating the crazies.

Now I actually feel kind of bad for her. But not that bad. She’s 28-years-old, worth upwards of $25 million, she has 11 Olympic medals and 30 World Championship medals and never has to work again a day in her life. She’ll be fine.

Finally, I’ll say this: the fact that Biles thought she needed to apologize, or her PR minions thought she did, is progress. A year ago no celeb would have thought that they needed to apologize to a conservative about anything. But she did. So as lame as it was, I count it as progress.

Here’s my off the cuff thoughts right after she “apologized.”

Oh and of course, Riley responded — all class — and accepted the apology. The lame apology.