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EXCLUSIVE: MyKayla Skinner helped Team USA win a silver medal in women’s gymnastics at the Tokyo Olympics after Simone Biles had to withdraw due to a case of strains.
But at the Paris Games last summer, she became an easy target for USA Gymnastics fans.
On July 3 of last year, Skinner posted a video about the 2024 U.S. women’s Olympic gymnastics team and made controversial comments about the team’s “talent and depth.” The video sparked a viral backlash from fans and even former teammates. Biles wrote “Not everyone needs a mic and a platform” in a social media post the same day.
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Mykayla Skinner of Team USA poses with the silver medal after the women’s vault final on the ninth day of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at the Ariake Gymnastics Center on August 1, 2021 in Tokyo, Japan. (Jamie Squire/Getty Images)
Skinner apologized for the comments and insisted they had been “misinterpreted.” But that didn’t stop online attacks from flooding his inbox and his mind.
“Words were twisted, things were said that I didn’t mean, so yeah, it was a very scary and difficult time. I love these girls more than anything, so it was really sad to see what happened and the way they attacked me and preyed on me was super devastating,” Skinner told PK Press Club Digital.
At the time, Skinner was a new mother.
“I was still breastfeeding at the time. And I was so depressed, because obviously I had said some hate,” she said. “I was getting death threats. My agent at the time was getting death threats and emails, and they were contacting his phone and sending him voicemails.”
Skinner says some critics even went so far as to tell her, “I shouldn’t be a mom.”
“It really sent me into a spiral, it was really, really hard to go through and I felt like I couldn’t be the mother I needed to be to my daughter,” she said, while becoming visibly emotional. “It was a scary thing to go through, just feeling like the world hates you.”
But through it all, Skinner says the experience helped her find purpose in becoming an advocate for protecting women’s spots. This week, she became the new ambassador for activist sportswear brand XX-XY Athletics, helping to launch a new Olympics-themed collection called “Gold Medal Campaign.”
“I’ve always believed in protecting women’s sports,” Skinner said. “It’s a really difficult and scary topic, but it’s definitely evolved a lot since that period of depression and feeling alone, it’s given me something else to look forward to and to stand for… It’s helped me a lot and made me a lot stronger talking about this topic.”
Skinner’s time to publicly act on that passion came in June, after Biles got into another online feud.
Conservative influencer Riley Gaines had just gone public with an incident involving a biologically male transgender softball pitcher who won a women’s state championship in Minnesota. Gaines previously asked Biles herself about signing with XX-XY Athletics in a previous interview with PK Press Club Digital three months earlier in March.
But after Gaines posted a social media post calling attention to Minnesota’s softball problem on June 6, Biles infamously and unexpectedly addressed Gaines with a quote reposted on X, calling Gaines “really sick,” a “square sore loser” and a “bully.” A later message from Biles insinuated that Gaines was “the same size” as “a male.”
LEAD COUNSEL FOR LARRY NASSAR VICTIMS CRITICIZES MANAGEMENT OF USA GYMNASTICS TRANS ATHLETES POLICY
Biles later deleted those posts and issued an apology, but not before Skinner chose sides. Skinner posted a statement on social media supporting Gaines, while claiming to be a victim of Biles’ “harassment.”
“When I saw that Simone attacked Riley Gaines, it really broke my heart,” Skinner said. “When this thing happened, I was like ‘you know what, it’s time for me to find my voice and stand up and stand with Riley.’
“It was my chance to speak out. I had a former teammate, you know, who was picking on someone, and I was like, ‘That’s not right.'”
Skinner believes Biles was genuine in her advocacy for transgender inclusion in women’s sports. However, Skinner hopes her former teammate will change her mind.
“I think she believes what she believes. I don’t think she’s on this side, at least, not yet, and I hope she can turn around and join us,” Skinner said.
Skinner’s interjection became one of the biggest twists in the viral feud sensation between Gaines and Biles in early June.
But it came at a cost that she was beginning to become familiar with.
“I got a crazy letter in the mail with no return address,” Skinner said. “Basically just telling me I’m going to hell, I’m going to die. Like, ‘transgender people are born in the womb,’ and they gave me all this information that I’m wrong and I’m stupid and I have no idea what I’m talking about.”
Skinner said the letter surprised her so much that at one point she even thought, “Oh my God, should I stay silent?”
She had deep-seated fears about speaking out on the topic of trans athletes in women’s sports, or even other sensitive topics. Skinner even had to turn down a prior opportunity to work with Gaines because of these fears.
“Riley, her team had contacted me a few years before this situation happened. And again, too scared, I just felt like I couldn’t say anything because in the gymnastics world I’ve been through a lot. I get a lot of criticism. I feel like in the gymnastics world you can’t have a voice. You can’t speak up,” Skinner said.
“All we did as gymnasts was eat, sleep and do gymnastics 24/7… They almost made us fear that we couldn’t say anything because they didn’t want us to have the power and control… I was born and raised into that, that’s all I know.”
She also had to deal with deals over whether she would lose her endorsements.
“I haven’t done a lot of sponsorship deals anyway, and honestly, for me, it’s not all about the money. Like, I can find other sponsorship deals from people who like and support what I do,” Skinner said.
With her status as a brand ambassador for XX-XY Athletics, Skinner is now teammates with Gaines and other activists in the “Save Women’s Sports” space, including Olympic gold medalist swimmer Nancy Hogshead and former University of Pennsylvania swimmer Paula Scanlan.
Company founder Jennifer Sey told PK Press Club Digital in February that the biggest thing she felt her brand was missing was a star with a “high-profile” sports career, adding that she knew some stars there, including Olympians, that she “kept an eye on” because Sey knew they were “secretly on her side.”
Sey wanted a young athlete, either in the middle of her career or someone who had recently competed.
Now, with Skinner on her roster, Sey believes she has one of her biggest signings since the company launched.
“It’s huge,” Sey said of Skinner’s recruitment. “People like MyKayla are known to athletes who are now competing in a lot more competitions… it’s really important to us, she’s been a star for USA Gymnastics for so long.
“I get direct messages every day from people saying ‘we love your brand, we’re just too scared to wear it.’ And the more relevant the athletes are, the more high-level athletes speak out, the less afraid others are, and that’s when we solve this problem. »
