Before there was this GOAT, there was another in her sport.

She has trashed that other person, so that other person was more than willing to trash the current GOAT to all who would listen this past week.

GOAT (Greatest Of All Time): Simone Biles

Other one: Aly Raisman- gymnastics
Retired American gymnast and two-time Olympian. She was captain of both the 2012 “Fierce Five” and 2016 “Final Five” U.S. women’s Olympic gymnastics teams, which won their respective team competitions

More than willing to trash the current GOAT: McKayla Maroney
American retired artistic gymnast and singer. She was a member of the American women’s gymnastics team dubbed the Fierce Five at the 2012 Summer Olympics, where she won a gold medal in the team and an individual silver medal in the vault event.

McKayla Maroney tells people not to take her moment as they defend Simone Biles

With the status of Simone Biles reaching Jordan-ian levels for not competing, one former gymnast is speaking out against those who claim she was FORCED to compete on a broken foot. McKayla Maroney, a 2012 gold and silver medalist, was honored to compete for Team USA, broken foot and all. And now she’s firing back at those who claim she did so against her will.

In a statement released via Maroney’s Twitter account, the gymnast told her side of the story: “Just want to be clear that I was not FORCED to compete on my broken foot. I never said that. I trained my whole life for THAT moment and it was an honor to compete for my country. I had zero doubt I could perform a great vault for team USA, and I did. Staying was my choice.”

Maroney’s statement references her silver medal performance at the 2012 Olympics, when she competed with a broken foot that later required surgery.

Her tweet featured a screen grab from two online publications whose headlines mentioned that she was forced to compete. “I’m not sure why the media spun my story this way. I never said I was forced to compete. I wanted to complete. Larry Nassar lied to keep me ON the team,” tweeted Maroney. – Source

Aly Raisman defends former teammate Biles: ‘I’m proud of her’

Two-time Olympian Aly Raisman joined in on the messages of support for U.S. gymnastics star Simone Biles, who pulled out of her team’s competition due to her mental health, saying she was “proud” of her former teammate.

Raisman, who along with Biles won a gold medal in the gymnastics team event at the Rio Olympics in 2016, told CNN’s Jake Tapper Tuesday that she was “completely devastated” to hear about how much Biles was struggling with the intense pressure placed on her to come out on top in Tokyo.

“I think coming from the U.S. where we are lucky to have so many incredible, successful athletes, there’s this pressure that we have to win and that if we don’t win, it’s this fear of, ‘What if we disappoint people? What if people don’t like us anymore?’” Raisman explained.

Raisman went on to say that it can be especially dangerous for elite gymnasts to compete if they are not in the best mindset to do so.

“There is so much room for error,” she said. “Even breathing at the wrong time or running a little bit too fast, it’s so easy roll your ankle or to hyperextend your knee or get lost in the air.”

“It’s really dangerous to say, ‘I feel really off today, I’m just going to ignore that and push myself anyways,’ and that’s when injuries can occur,” she added.

“I can’t imagine how hard that was for her to pull out today, but I’m proud of her,” Raisman said, adding that Biles “knows her body better than anyone else and she knows her mind better than anyone else.” – Source

Opinion: Why Simone Biles is still the GOAT

Simone Biles is indisputably in a league of her own, and it’s not just because of her untouchable level of talent.

By competing in the sport she loves and dominates, she is forced to represent an organization that was complicit in the trauma of her and hundreds of other gymnasts. Additionally, as a Black woman, she faces racism and sexism within and outside the sport. Yet Biles continues to display her greatness by being the best gymnast in the world. Her withdrawal from the team finals at the 2020 Olympic Games does not disprove that, but rather further proves the unbearable pressure she has battled with every day for the past eight years.

In 2016, former USA Gymnastics medical coordinator Larry Nassar was publicly accused of sexual abuse in an Indianapolis Star report. After years of ignored sexual misconduct reports from patients he treated within the USA womens’ gymnastics team and at Michigan State University, former gymnast Rachel Denhollander and an unnamed former Olympic medalist publicly exposed Nassar. The news shocked the world, as it seemed USA Gymnastics had ignored a problem brought to their attention several times over the course of several years.

At the height of the #MeToo movement in October 2017, McKayla Maroney of the “Fierce Five” 2012 Olympic team was the first to announce that she had been abused by Nassar. Following her statement, both Aly Raisman and Gabby Douglas of the same team said that they, too, had been victims of Nassar.

Finally in January 2018, Nassar was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison in a seven-day trial, where 156 women testified against him. Raisman delivered her famous speech in which she addressed Nassar, USA Gymnastics and the US Olympic Committee: “USA Gymnastics, where is the honesty? Where is the transparency? Why must the manipulation continue?”

In the midst of the trial, Simone Biles came forward about her abuse for the first time. She wrote in a Twitter statement, “It is impossibly difficult to relive these experiences and it breaks my heart even more to think that as I work towards my dream of competing in Tokyo 2020, I will have to continually return to the same training facility where I was abused.”

Biles is the only Olympic gymnast to reveal her abuse and continue competing at an elite level — and that is not to imply that any other gymnast is less admirable for not returning to an organization that has done nothing but harm them. Many of the gymnasts who came forward had already retired from elite gymnastics prior to the Nassar trial. Biles was simply in a different position than most of her peers who suffered the same. While others were finishing their careers or had already finished, Biles was still at the top of her game, causing the situation to be a bit more complicated.

It was uncovered after Nassar’s trial that USAG officials directly hid from Biles the 2015 FBI investigation of Nassar leading up to the 2016 Olympic Games — despite knowing that Biles was a possible victim, according to the Wall Street Journal. Biles has expressed her frustration and feelings of betrayal toward USAG, saying, “We had one goal, and we’ve done everything that they’ve asked us for, even when we didn’t want to, and they couldn’t do one damn job. You had one job; you literally had one job, and you couldn’t protect us.” – Source

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