Even had McKayla Maroney speaking on it, and Maroney don't do nothing but mind her own damned business.
Wow, Maroney’s comment was even more brutal.
It’s clear to me Team USA collectively is sick of Skinner’s schtick. The monkey emoji incident was bad enough, but Skinner could feign ignorance, apologize, and move on.
This though not only disparaged most of the teammates she directly trained alongside in Tokyo (she excluded Biles for whatever reason) as they prepared for the biggest sporting event of their lives while Skinner lounged retired at home in the glory of her lone vault silver medal, but also harkened back fondly to the Karolyi era and the decades of abuse Team USA is striving so hard to distance itself AND from which literally hundreds of athletes are still working to heal. Some may never fully recover.
As Maroney says, “(Skinner) f’ed around and found out.” But I legitimately feel bad for Skinner because I honestly don’t think she gets it. In her world, she spoke her mind, people responded negatively, so she apologized in the “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone’s feelings, but …” sort of way. In her mind, she likely thinks she was simply trying to motivate the team and is shocked it was taking in such a poor way.
The truth is, Skinner was in all probability a victim of abuse her entire gymnastics career and certainly at the University of Utah, where Kara Eaker famously retired early in the middle of a promising collegiate career citing verbal and emotional abuse. But Skinner attributes all of that as tough love, intense elite-level training, a necessary means to the end of motivating her to be a champion.
Abuse begets abuse. And it got Skinner National Titles and an Olympic silver medal. She’s probably still asking herself why everyone is so sensitive to her telling it like it is.