A video of Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), the Republican vice presidential nominee, speaking about Olympic gymnast Simone Biles withdrawing from the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
“Well, I think, obviously, it’s understandable that she was going through an incredible amount of pressure,” Vance said at the time.
He went on, “What I find so weird about this — and it reflects on the media more than it does on Simone Biles — is that we’ve tried to turn a very tragic moment — Simone Biles quitting the Olympic team — into this act of heroism. And I think it reflects pretty poorly on our sort of therapeutic society that we try to praise people not for moments of strength, not for moments of heroism, but for their weakest moments.”
Watch the video below:
“Being an athlete at that level is incredibly tough. A normal response in this moment would be to say, ‘It’s just a shame that she’s going through this. It’s a shame that she quit,’ but instead, what our press has done, I think, is turn this into this weird therapeutic moment. ‘Let’s praise her for doing this.’ And I think that’s really where the problem herein lies,” Vance added.
The video surfaced after Biles won her fifth gold medal and led the U.S. gymnastics team to a win in the finals of the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Her win comes three years after the U.S. team won a silver medal as Biles withdrew from the team after she experienced the “twisties.”
