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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 with a case of spinning.
But by last summer’s Paris Games, he had become an easy target for USA Gymnastics fans.
On July 3 of last year, Skinner posted a video about the 2024 US Olympic women’s gymnastics team and made controversial comments about the team’s “talent and depth.” The video sparked a viral reaction from fans and even former teammates. Biles wrote “Not everyone needs a microphone and a platform” in a social media post that same day.
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Mykayla Skinner of Team USA poses with the silver medal following 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 were “misinterpreted.” But that didn’t stop online attacks from flooding his inbox and mind.
“Words were twisted, things were said that I didn’t mean, so yeah, it was a very scary and difficult moment. I love those girls more than anything, so it was really sad to see what happened and the way they attacked me and came at me was super devastating,” Skinner told Pak Gazette Digital.
At the time, Skinner was a new mother.
“I was still breastfeeding at the time. And I got really depressed, because obviously I said something hateful,” she said. “He was getting death threats. My agent at the time was getting death threats and they were sending him emails, and they were actually contacting his phone and sending him voicemails.”
Skinner says some critics even told her, “I shouldn’t be a mother.”
“It really took me down a spiral, it was very, very difficult to get through and I felt like I couldn’t be the mother I needed to be for my daughter,” she said, while becoming visibly emotional. “It was scary to go through feeling like the world just hates you.”
But through it all, Skinner says the experience helped her find purpose in becoming an advocate for women’s spot protection. This week she became the new ambassador for activist sportswear brand XX-XY Athletics, helping to launch a new Olympic-themed collection called “Gold Medal Campaign.”
“I’ve always believed in protecting women’s sports,” Skinner said. “It really is a difficult and scary topic, but it’s definitely grown a lot from that time when I was depressed and feeling alone, it’s given me something more to look forward to and be an advocate for… It’s helped me a lot and made me a lot stronger in speaking out about this topic.”
Skinner’s moment to publicly act on that passion came in June, after Biles became involved in another online feud.
Conservative influencer Riley Gaines had just posted about an incident involving a biologically male transgender softball pitcher who won a women’s state championship in Minnesota. Gaines had previously asked Biles to sign with XX-XY Athletics in a previous interview with Pak Gazette Digital just three months earlier in March.
But after Gaines made a social media post drawing attention to the Minnesota softball issue on June 6, Biles infamously and unexpectedly reached out to Gaines with a repost of a quote about X, calling Gaines “truly sick,” a “sore loser” and a “bully.” A later post by Biles implied that Gaines was “the same size” as “a man.”
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Biles later deleted those posts and apologized, but not before Skinner chose a side in the feud. Skinner issued a statement on social media supporting Gaines, while claiming to be a victim of Biles’ own “bullying.”
“When I saw Simone attack Riley Gaines, it really broke my heart,” Skinner said. “When that happened, I thought, ‘You know what? It’s time for me to find my voice and stand up and be by Riley’s side.’
“This was my chance to speak out. I had a former teammate, you know, come up to someone and I said, ‘This isn’t right.'”
Skinner believes Biles was being authentic in her advocacy for transgender inclusion in women’s sports. However, Skinner hopes her former teammate changes 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 this came at a cost that he was becoming familiar with.
“I got a crazy letter in the mail with no return address,” Skinner said. “They basically just told me I was going to hell, that I was going to die. Like, ‘Transgender people are born in the womb,’ and they gave me all this information that I was 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, do I have to stay silent?”
I had deep-seated fears about speaking out on the issue of trans athletes in women’s sports, or even other sensitive topics. Skinner even had to turn down a previous opportunity to work with Gaines because of those fears.
“Riley, her team had reached out a few years before this situation happened. And again, too scared, I 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,” Skinner said.
“All we did as gymnasts was eat, sleep and gymnastics 24/7… They almost put us in fear that we just couldn’t say anything because they didn’t want us to have power and control… I was born and raised on it, that’s all I know.”
He also had to face compromises over whether he would lose sponsorships.
“I wasn’t doing a ton of endorsement deals anyway, and honestly, for me it’s not just about the money. I can find other endorsement deals from people who love and support what I’m doing,” Skinner said.
As a brand ambassador for XX-XY Athletics, Skinner is now a teammate of 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.
The company’s founder, Jennifer Sey, told Pak Gazette Digital in February that the biggest thing she thought her brand was missing was a star with a “top-notch” athletic career, adding that she knew some stars, including Olympic athletes, who she was “keeping an eye on,” because Sey knew they were “secretly on her side.”
Sey wanted a young athlete, either in the middle of his career or someone who had competed recently.
Now, with Skinner on his roster, Sey believes he has one of his biggest signings since the company launched.
“It’s huge,” Sey said of Skinner’s recruitment. “People like MyKayla are known by athletes who are competing in a much bigger way today… it’s a big deal for us, she’s been a USA Gymnastics star for so long.
“I get direct messages from people every day saying ‘we love your brand, we’re just too scared to use it.’ And the more relevant athletes, the more high-profile athletes talk, the less scared other people are, and that’s when we solve this problem.”
