Simone Biles stands up for trans athletes — Will Graves reflects on writing about a gender-neutral gymnastics competition

Last Friday, after this column went to press, Simone Biles made headlines when she responded on X to former NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines, who had posted earlier that day about a Minnesota high school that won its first state softball championship. The team’s pitcher, who is transgender, threw a shutout game (meaning the other team did not score) to lead her team to victory.

“To be expected when your star player is a boy,” Gaines wrote on X in response to that story. 

Biles responded, in part: “You should be uplifting the trans community and perhaps finding a way to make sports inclusive OR creating a new avenue where trans feel safe in sports. Maybe a transgender category IN ALL sports!! 

But instead… You bully them…”

She signed off with “No one in sports is safe with you around!”

In a later response, Biles also mocked Gaines and told her to “bully someone your own size, which would ironically be a male.” 

Then Gaines got ugly, comparing Biles’ speaking out about the Larry Nassar sexual abuse scandal and about the abuse she personally endured to Gaines’ having to share a locker room with a transgender swimmer in college. 

On Tuesday, Biles apologized on X for “get[ting] personal” with Gaines, but said that the topic of transgender athletes in sport requires “empathy and respect” rather than targeting young athletes who cannot control the systems within which they play. 

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Gaines, meanwhile, doubled down, posting photos of Biles during her Senate testimony against Nassar and a screenshot of Biles’ original X post with the caption, “Simone Biles when she had to endure a predatory man Vs Simone Biles when other girls have to endure predatory men.” When podcaster Stephen A. Smith asked Gaines in an interview to defend her response, he noted that “to go that low, Gaines, you lost all credibility.” Smith also called Gaines’s response “cruel.” 

Biles has long been a supporter of the LGBTQIA+ community and has advocated for better mental health care for athletes. Her posts make it clear that she supports inclusion for trans athletes, and she suggests in her initial response to Gaines an open division in all sports as a potential path.  

Gymnastics is the rare sport where the subject of transgender athletes competing has made few waves, even as the topic has moved beyond a hot-button one in other sports to become a raging dumpster fire. This is likely because what the national federation deems men’s and women’s gymnastics to be are essentially two separate sports, with different equipment in each (and, even where the equipment is the same, it is used in different ways). 

Back in April, journalist Will Graves wrote an article for the AP about the National Association of Intercollegiate Gymnastics Clubs (NAIGC), which has roughly 2,500 athletes representing about 160 clubs nationwide. The NAIGC has no gender divisions, and trans gymnasts are welcome to compete on any equipment on which they feel most comfortable. In a world without perfect solutions, the NAIGC seems to come pretty close to an ideal of inclusion of all bodies and identities in sports. It is the embodiment of what Biles spoke about, even if she did not call out NAIGC competition directly.  If you aren’t sure where you stand on the issue of transgender inclusion in athletics, read Graves’s words and let them sink in. 

And this Pride Month, be glad that Simone Biles is on the right side of history. Happy Pride to all who celebrate. 

Other gym news:

College Gym News has a sweet, sweet 2025 leo roundtable for your enjoyment. They’ve also got 10 beam routines from the 2025 NCAA season you should watch and some cool skills in the incoming freshman class to watch for next season. 

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Fisk announced this week that the 2026 season will be its last. This is very sad news for the first HBCU gymnastics team. (I’ll write more on this in the next few weeks).

Geralen Stack-Eaton will be Cal’s new head coach. A former Alabama gymnast who became an assistant at Minnesota for several years, Stack-Eaton should be able to produce great results for the Golden Bears. 

A Minnesota local fluff-y piece on Gopher Staters Lily Pederson and Elle Mueller. 

Mary Lou Retton pled no contest to a DUI in West Virginia and received a $100 fine. 

Five at The IX: Will Graves on GymCastic

This episode of GymCastic from April 13 includes an interview with Will Graves, the AP journalist I mentioned above who wrote the beautiful piece about NAIGC gymnastics competitions and how welcoming they were to all athletes, regardless of gender identity. As a reporter, sometimes you end up writing articles that become very personal and meaningful to you despite going in unaware, and this is what Graves describes here. It’s really moving and a great accompaniment to all your Pride celebrations.