On July 30, Biles and teammates – Suni Lee, Jordan Chiles, Jade Carey and Hezly Rivera – won gold for Team USA at the Olympics‘ group final for women’s gymnastics.
The decorated athlete, who now has eight Olympic medals under her belt, celebrated the landmark occasion by sharing several photos of the team on her Instagram.
Underneath all the group photos, Biles captioned the post with, “Lack of talent, lazy, Olympic champions.”
Her caption ultimately sent fans into a frenzy as many have interpreted it as a dig towards Biles’ ex-teammate MyKayla Skinner, who previously criticized Team USA for their ‘work ethic’ in a since-deleted YouTube video.
Biles and Skinner were formerly teammates. (Patrick Smith/Getty Images)
“Besides Simone, I feel like the talent and the depth just isn’t like what it used to be,” Skinner said in the video following the initial announcement of which members were heading to the Paris Olympics.
“Just notice like, I mean, obviously a lot of girls don’t work as hard. The girls just don’t have the work ethic,” she added.
Following major backlash to the video, Skinner retracted her remarks and claimed that her comments were misinterpreted.
Posting a video to her Instagram stories on July 3, Skinner clarified that ‘a lot of the stuff’ she talked about in the deleted video ‘wasn’t always necessarily about the current team.’
“I love and support all the girls that made it and I’m so proud of them,” she added in a video on her Instagram Story.
Team USA won major gold this Olympics. (Jamie Squire/Getty Images)
“It was more about going back into my own gym, just the work ethic is different compared to when we were doing gymnastics in the [former team coordinator] Márta [Károlyi] era. And I’m not sticking up for Márta or saying what she did was good, I’m just saying it was different.
“So anyway, sorry for anything that got out of context or seemed hurtful. That is never my intention.
“And seriously, throughout the video, I was so pumped for the girls, and it was so fun watching the trials and doing a live with everybody.”
Leader of team f around and find out! (Tom Weller/VOIGT/GettyImages)
Clips from Skinner’s initial video have since gone viral on Twitter with fans weighing in on her comments and Biles’ Instagram post.
“Simone naming her team ‘f around and find out’ and then adding this caption after the win was absolutely iconic,” one user wrote on Twitter.
“When you’ve just been SITTING on an Instagram caption,” another chimed in.
Many have also noticed Biles’ teammate, Suni Lee’s own comment underneath the Instagram post and have taken it as a confirmation of Biles’ shade.
“Put a finger down if Simone Biles just ended you,” Lee wrote, further sending fans into mayhem.