Olympic gymnastics champion Simone Biles and former collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines were involved in a war of words on X over the weekend regarding transgender athletes.
Biles, the most highly decorated gymnast in U.S. Olympic history, began the feud when she scolded Gaines for criticizing Minnesota’s Champlin Park High School softball team, which won the 2025 Class AAAA state championship in the female sport, for having what Gaines claimed was a boy, who identified as a girl, as the team’s star player.
“Comments off lol,” Gaines said in an X post announcing the Minnesota softball team’s championship announcement. “To be expected when your star player is a boy.”
Biles called the former NCAA swimmer “sick” and a “sore loser.”
“You’re truly sick, all of this campaigning because you lost a race,” Biles posted. “Straight up sore loser. 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. Maybe a transgender category IN ALL sports!!”
“But instead,” Biles said, “You bully them.”
“One things [sic] for sure is no one in sports is safe with you around!!!!!” she added.
Biles then accused Gaines of bullying transgender athletes. In an additional post on X, the gymnast told Gaines to “bully someone your own size, which would ironically be a male.”
Gaines responded in several posts on X, providing an analytical breakdown of Biles’s comments. One included a post by Biles herself from October 2017 in which the gymnast appears to acknowledge that males have a biological advantage over females in athletic competitions.
ahhhh good thing guys don’t compete against girls or he’d take all the gold medals !!
https://t.co/gto13RzC8Y
— Simone Biles (@Simone_Biles) October 12, 2017
“Ahhhh good thing guys don’t compete against girls or he’d take all the gold medals,” Biles said in the 2017 social media post.
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The irony of Biles’s words from 2017 was not lost on Gaines. She commented about it, highlighting what she said felt was hypocrisy.
“Oop don’t you hate it when your past self completely undermines your current nonsensical argument?” Gaines asked. “How has 2025 Simone reconciled with the fact 2017 Simone was a ‘truly sick bully’ by her own standard?”
As of Sunday night, Biles has not responded to any of Gaines’s posts or made any other social media posts.