swimmer<\/u><\/a> says that while Biles\u2019 comments on her appearance did not hurt her feelings, she felt heartbroken thinking of young gymnasts, like her teen sister, who has looked up to the Olympic champion.\u00a0<\/p>\n“That’s the people who look up to Simone. That’s the platform that she’s built and curated and developed. Those people love her,” she said. “They admire her and suddenly, again, in one tweet, and I would imagine an aim to be virtuous and inclusive and kind and compassionate, she sold out people like my younger sister. That’s how I felt. That’s what made me feel heartbroken.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Several of Simone Biles\u2019 teammates have reached out to Gaines amid the \u2018X\u2019 debate to share their personal support for the swimmer\u2019s stance, she shared with Fox News.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“They believe the intention behind this is that Simone has a new docu-series coming out on Netflix,” Gaines told Fox News. “They believe it’s an attempt to put her name, her profile, her face, her image back in the public sphere, but again, I think this ultimately backfired on her.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ultimately, Gaines says standing up for women\u2019s sports is not a divisive issue among everyday Americans.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“This isn’t a polarizing issue if you can remove yourself from the opinions of the elite. The people who are on the private jets, if you remove yourself from the opinion of Hollywood or elected representation, this truthfully is not a polarizing, divisive issue. It’s a unifying issue.”\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former 12-time NCAA all-American swimmer Riley Gaines is speaking out about her \u2018X\u2019 feud with Olympic gymnast Simone Biles over transgender athletes competing in women\u2019s sports.\u00a0 The social media argument began on Friday after Gaines called out a Minnesota high school, whose softball team won a state championship after playing with a transgender pitcher. Gaines, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":502,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1092"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1092"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1093,"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1092\/revisions\/1093"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vecimasupport.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}