Category: Olympics

Simone Biles says she wears her GOAT leotards to ‘mess’ with her haters

“They hated it, I loved it.”

Simone Biles is unlike any other athlete on the planet, but something she does have in common with others is taking a lot of hate and criticism on social media. And it’s easy for some when they can hide behind their screens and say nasty things to the greatest gymnast of all time.

But her haters ended up fueling her to compete while wearing leotards with rhinestone goat heads on them.

In the latest episode of Simone vs Herself — a Facebook Watch docuseries highlighting Biles’ life and training up to and after the Tokyo Olympics this summer — she opens up about her critics.

In the final episode, titled What Can’t I Do?, to drop before the Games, she says:

“Lately, I haven’t been as active on social media, and I feel like I’m kind of getting to the point where I don’t share as much. But I’ve always been so open and honest with my fans, and I feel like it’s kind of punishing my fans for the haters, you know?

“But at the end of the day, it’s like, people are just so rude. They tweet me that they hope I fall on bars. They hope I mess up the entire meet. I’m not as good [as] I was in 2016.

“They were just saying the most outrageous things. They don’t care. They probably think you’re not gonna see it or you don’t care or they don’t think we’re human like them.”

Simone vs Herself director Gotham Chopra recently told For The Win that while examining Biles’ greatness, a huge focus of the docuseries was to highlight the raw, human side of her as well.

In the latest episode, Biles acknowledges she worries about the criticism that may come if she messes up, and she discusses the pressures that come with doing challenging and dangerous moves, like the Yurchenko double pike on vault, where she says a mistake could end with a broken ankle or snapped shin.

(Emilee Chinn/Getty Images)

And Biles explains what led to her wearing her GOAT leotards while training and competing. She says:

“We wore the GOAT [leotard] just to kind of I wouldn’t say to piss people off but mess with them because there were a lot of people that say, ‘Hey, Simone, you’re the GOAT.’ But then if I acknowledge it, then I’m cocky.

“Everybody can call you the GOAT, but then if you acknowledge it once, they’re like, ‘Oh my god, I hate her! She’s not that awesome!’ I don’t think it’s fair that you can stand behind the computer and talk all that smack, and I just take it as an athlete. So it was kind of just to push back, and then it just pissed them off, so in the end, we won. People loved it, they hated it, I loved it.”

Whether or not Biles will wear a GOAT leotard at the Tokyo Olympics remains to be seen, but no matter what, she’s undeniably the greatest of all time.

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Breaking down the new and returning sports in the Tokyo Olympics, from baseball to sport climbing

MORE SPORTS!

The lineup for Summer Olympics this year in Tokyo is going to look a bit different compared with the Rio Games in 2016. Several new sports have been added and a couple are returning, and some existing sports have had new events added.

For the Tokyo Olympics, athletes will compete in 41 sports with 339 medal events, an increase this year thanks to the new events.

After a brief hiatus, baseball and softball are returning for the Tokyo Olympics, and surfing, skateboarding, sport climbing and freestyle BMX have been added to the mix.

Additionally, basketball is expanding with 3-on-3 matchups, and karate has been added to this year’s Games.

Here are a few more details about the new sports added to the Tokyo Olympics lineup…

MORE OLYMPICS: Meet some of the world’s best athletes ahead of the Summer Games

Trae Young appeared to take a shot at ex-Hawks coach Lloyd Pierce after Team USA’s loss to Australia

The Lloyd Pierce Effect on display.

While it’s likely a bit early to panic about Team USA men’s basketball dropping two straight exhibition games to Nigeria and Australia respectively, there are serious questions facing the team as the Tokyo Olympic Games approach.

The team’s roster construction immediately comes to mind, and the players left off the squad are taking notice.

Head coach Gregg Popovich elected to go with a team that didn’t include three of the NBA’s top young superstars in Zion Williamson, Ja Morant and Trae Young. And when you look at Young’s snub, it’s difficult to ignore ex-Hawks coach Lloyd Pierce’s inclusion on the Team USA coaching staff.

That might explain the two-emoji tweet that the Hawks star posted on Twitter shortly after Team USA’s 91-83 loss to Australia on Monday.

Underrated emojis right there.

The Hawks fired Pierce in March after starting the season at 14-20 and replaced him with Nate McMillan who led the Hawks to a 27-11 record and a trip to the Eastern Conference Finals.

But even before Pierce’s firing, the Olympic team was a sour subject between the then-head coach and Young. Back in 2020, Pierce didn’t exactly go to bat for Young about Team USA consideration. Instead, he specifically named Harrison Barnes and Mason Plumlee as more deserving Olympians.

Again, it’s still early and the Olympics haven’t even started yet. But that kind of organizational mindset isn’t doing any favors for this Team USA squad. No wonder Young tweeted what he did.

https://youtu.be/pgHz7vbqMWw

Gregg Popovich got into a heated exchange with a reporter after Team USA’s loss to Australia, but they’re both right

Gregg Popovich didn’t like this question at all

Things have gotten off to a rocky start, at best, for Gregg Popovich’s Team USA squad this summer.

They’ve lost two straight exhibition games to Australia and Nigeria. In both, games were extremely close and down to the wire. They lost to Nigeria by just 3 points falling 90-87. The Australia loss was a bit worse with a score of 91-83.

This isn’t quite what people used to team Team USA. They were destroying teams in exhibition games in 2016. The world has gotten much, much better since then. But one would think the NBA’s brightest stars would still be a step above coming from the best league in the world.

So a reporter asked Damian Lillard about it after the loss to Australia. But Gregg Popovich didn’t like it one bit.

They got into a heated exchange in the press conference and things got pretty awkward.

“The reporter: I know coach has been preaching about how much better the world has gotten over the years…what’s it like having watched some of your colleagues go through some of these tournaments and blow these teams out and now you’re having a much different, much closer and tougher experience?

Pop didn’t like that one bit. After Lillard answered the question, he went off.

“Popovich: You asked the same sort of question, the same family of question the last time, where you assume things that are not true. Where you just mentioned blowing these teams out. That’s never happened. I don’t know where you get that.”

The reporter interjected to defend the questioning, but it wasn’t caught on mic. Pop didn’t appreciate that either.

“Popovich: Are you going to let me finish my statement or not? So you’ll be quiet now, while I talk. And then I’ll listen to you. When you make statements in the past about blowing out these other teams, number one, you give no respect to the other teams. I talked to you last time about the same thing. We’ve had very close games against four or five countries in all of these tournaments. So, the good teams do not get blown out. There are certain games that might happen…where somebody gets blown out. But in general, nobody is blowing anybody out with the good teams. So when you make a statement like that, you assume that’s what’s going on. And that’s incorrect.”

WHEW. What an exchange. Sheesh. You can tell that, clearly, both sides were pretty irritated by one another.

The funny part is both sides are also correct here.

It is fair to ask about why Team USA isn’t dominating like they typically have. It’s not out of bounds. Again, during the 2016 exhibition games, there were plenty of blowouts. And Popovich is also already 9-5 in total as Team USA’s head coach. Mike Krzyzewski only lost once.

Now, is that a fair bar to live up to? Absolutely not. As Popovich said, the world is much better at basketball. There’s talent everywhere. There’s plenty of NBA talent on Nigeria’s and Australia’s rosters. They’re good! It is disrespectful to expect them to be blown out.

Gold is never a guarantee despite what people are used to from Team USA. The other team is always going to show up, compete and play hard. If the USA slacks at all, they’ll lose. That’s clear.

Hopefully, when the real competition starts they get it together.

Watch our new sneaker unboxing video series, Special Delivery 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgHz7vbqMWw

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Nigeria basketball’s Twitter account is out here dunking on everyone and it’s so good

What a team and what an account.

It’s time to give some respect to Nigeria’s basketball team.

The roster that includes NBA players like Josh Okogie, Jahlil Okafor, Chimezie Metu, Precious Achiuwa and more has made some statements in Olympic exhibition contests, defeating Team USA 90-87, and then taking down a really good Argentina team.

It’s given the team’s official Twitter account a chance to dunk all over the critics and troll opponents, which makes @NigeriaBasket the official first social media star of the Olympics before the Games begin in Tokyo.

Let’s review some of the account’s best tweets and responses to some awful comments from ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith, who made headlines for all the wrong reasons on Monday.

Aly Raisman was reunited with her dog Mylo after a stressful week of searching

Thank goodness!!

This is a story with a very happy ending.

But for about a week, it was an extremely stressful time for three-time Olympic gold-medalist Aly Raisman.

On July 3, she reached out on social media to tell the world that her dog Mylo ran off as fireworks were going off in the Boston area of the Seaport district. She passed around a flyer with his photo on it and the word spread.

And eventually, Mylo was found and returned to her, thank goodness.

Let’s look back at how it all unfolded and how Mylo was eventually returned to the legendary gymnast.

Tokyo’s State of Emergency and what it means for the Olympics, explained

Things are still really bad

Yes, the COVID-19 vaccine is now widely available in the United States, but that doesn’t mean the pandemic is over. It’s not even close yet.

And things are pretty bad in a lot of places across the globe. And Japan is one of those places.

The country is currently struggling with a COVID-19 spike with infections spreading at an alarming rate. Because of the spike, Tokyo has declared yet another state of emergency from July 12 to August 22, per the Associated Press.

Obviously, this is a big deal for the summer Olympic games that start in Tokyo in just a couple of weeks. The games are going to look drastically different because of it.

Here’s everything you need to know.

Get to know Alix Klineman and April Ross: 5 facts about the United States’ new top beach volleyball pair

April Ross is an Olympic veteran. Alix Klineman has been waiting for this chance.

For the Tokyo Olympics this summer, For The Win is helping you get to know some of the star Olympians competing on the world’s biggest stage. Leading up to the Opening Ceremony, we’re highlighting 23 athletes in 23 days. Up next up is the duo of Alix Klineman and April Ross.

While much of the attention surrounding the U.S. Women’s Beach Volleyball team will focus on who isn’t there — Keri Walsh Jennings will miss her first summer Olympics of the century  — you should go ahead and get to know what would have been the country’s best medal hope, anyway.

Alix Klineman, 31, and April Ross, 39, finished tied for first in the FIVB provisional Olympic ranking. They’ve been so dominant since teaming up in 2018 that they were able to clinch a spot in the Games by winning a tournament in March to secure one of the United State’s two spots in Tokyo (other squads had to wait until June for their status to be figured out.)

Here are some facts you should know about Ross and Klineman.

READ MORE FROM OUR TOKYO OLYMPICS 23 in 23 SERIES HERE.