Is the US women’s gymnast contingent for Paris good enough? Simone Biles will lead a team of proven winners in Sunisa Lee, Jordan Chiles, Jade Carey, and first-year senior Hezly Rivera. While Biles admitted they’d need to improve, Olympic silver medalist MyKayla Skinner, who had stepped in to replace Biles in Tokyo, has come down hard on Biles’s teammates.

This time around, Skinner was watching the US gymnastics trials from home and had a two-hour YouTube watch party, where some controversial comments surfaced concerning her reservations about the current women’s gymnastics team for Paris… with the exception of Biles, who has 37 world championships and Olympic medals to her credit.

Skinner said, “Besides Simone, I feel like the talent and the depth just isn’t what it used to be. Just notice like, I mean, obviously a lot of girls don’t work as hard. The girls just don’t have the work ethic.” However, she didn’t stop there.

She also claimed that Safe Sport, the required abuse awareness training program, was one of the reasons behind the drop in work ethic. “Coaches can’t get on athletes, and they have to be really careful what they say.” In 2019, US Gymnastics had instated a new Safe Sport policy following the Larry Nassar sexual abuse case in 2018.

But hold on! While she is calling for more strictness from coaches, she ironically spoke out against the infamous coaching methods of US gymnastics coach Marta Karolyi.

Last year, on her Agree to Disagree podcast, Skinner talked about the challenges of elite gymnastics and coaching methods at various levels while mentioning,” Marta era was way worse,” in terms of rigors of training. Even during her return to elite gymnastics ahead of the Tokyo Olympics, Skinner admitted to being “scared” even though Marta had left the US gymnastics team.

As Team USA prepared for the first national team camp of 2020, Skinner explained, “It’s just so weird coming into the gym and not feeling like, you know, ‘I’m going to die.’ Before it was like, ‘I’ve got to hit that routine or I’m going to get yelled at.'” Thus, her calling for strictness in coaching may not go down well.

Marta and her husband Bela Karolyi fostered an intense training environment at the Karolyi Ranch. In 2018, many gymnasts came forward with accusations of the Karolyis being harsh in their training. Moreover, Simone Biles even admitted to being starved at the Ranch under the coaching of Marta Karolyi, as one of their abusive antics. The facility was shut down in 2018.

But do Skinner’s comments about lack of talent and depth hold weight?

“I could have made that team,” Skinner doubles down on her criticism of Team USA

In her now-deleted video on YouTube, Skinner pointed out how gymnasts who fell twice still ended up in the second spot for selection. This is not a new concern. Many have noted that this year’s gymnastics trials were marred by injuries that sidelined valuable players. Foremost among these is Shilese Jones, whose qualification into Team USA was considered certain.

In the last two years, she won six World Championship medals that cemented her spot as one of the top three gymnasts on the planet. But tragedy struck when she withdrew due to a knee injury. Another favorite to make the team was Skye Blakely, who finished second to Biles in the US Championships. Even Winter Cup champion Kayla DiCello was considered a done deal. However, both athletes ended up withdrawing from the trials due to Achilles injuries.

Their withdrawal meant three positions on the top five in the leaderboard were up for grabs. This meant younger athletes with no Olympic experience could qualify for the USA team. Talking about these injuries, Skinner said she wished she made a comeback, saying,

“Not saying anything to the girls that got injured, but if I could come back, I think I would be able to do it. And I think I probably could’ve made that Olympic team.”

Simone Biles’ performance at the end of Day 2 of the trials underscored her pivotal role in the team. Her scores were nearly 6 points ahead, with a total of 117.225, compared to runner-up Suni Lee’s 111.675, while Chiles ranked third with 111.425. Despite securing qualification for the Paris Olympics, Biles admitted,

“I feel like we all have more to give and our Tokyo performances weren’t the best.”

Let’s compare this to 2021 trials. Simone Biles led with 118.098, followed by Suni Lee at 115.832 and Jordan Chiles at 114.631. The gap from first to third was a lot closer. Skinner had qualified fifth in the team with 112.264, which is higher than this year’s fifth position, Hezly Rivera, at around 111. However, at the 2021 Tokyo Games, Team USA had to settle for a silver medal in a campaign fraught with uncharacteristic mistakes. Chiles fell on the floor exercise, and Biles got lost in the air on her vault before her withdrawal. But this time, the team would want to set the record straight.

Interesting fact: The 2008 and 2012 teams were made up of first-time Olympians. The 2016 Rio Olympic team had two Olympic returners, Aly Raisman and Gabby Douglas. In Tokyo, only Biles had Olympic experience, but this time four of the five members are returning to compete in the Games.

Jade Carey won gold in Tokyo in the floor exercise and narrowly missed the podium on the vault. Replacing Biles on uneven bars and balance beam in Tokyo, Jordan Chiles hit both of those routines and helped her team to silver. Sunisa Lee took bronze in uneven bars at the event and won silver with the team. She then won the women’s individual all-around gold, becoming only the sixth U.S. woman to claim the all-around title.

That leaves Hezly Rivera, 16, the only member of the team without Olympic experience. But with an experienced bunch around her, she will learn a lot by the time she gets to compete. Moreover, she qualified in fifth place in the highly competitive trials. Notably, the 2024 trials had only five spots for qualification compared to the six in 2021. Additionally, the selection process is tough. 

According to the criteria, the athlete must have been on the 2023 World Championships team or served as a replacement athlete. Additionally, the athlete must have scored 51.00 or better in the 2023 post-US Championships Selected National Team Training Camp, 2024 Selected National Team Training Camp, 2024 Winter Cup, 2024 Classic Meet, or the 2024 National Team International Assignment.

These hurdles are ones that all female gymnasts on the current team have faced. So dismissing them right away may not sit right with many people. As Team USA embarks on its redemption tour, do you think MyKayla Skinner’s comments are justified?