When the world turned its attention to the fury over Riley Gaines’ public criticism against Simone Biles and the chaos it stirred across the digital sphere, few noticed what unfolded quietly, in the margins. It happened far from the microphone, on a still afternoon at the gym. This Olympic athlete had just finished a clean set on beam. Not her most demanding apparatus, but on that day, a moral victory. She sat down, her wrists still chalked, her expression subdued.

So, who are we talking about? It’s none other than the French Olympian, Melanie De Jesus. Simone Biles’ closest training partner these last few years has been at the World Champions Centre. And thinking that most people wouldn’t recognize this version of her. The confident, glittering face of the French gymnast had been emptied out in Paris. Her Olympic dream, carefully sculpted for the home crowd, had collapsed in full view. The uneven bars fall was only the beginning. She could not salvage the day. The routines unraveled. The crowd hushed. 

She did not speak much in those early days. The only time her spirit flickered again was when Biles asked if she’d join the Gold Over America Tour. It wasn’t a proposition. It was an invitation.  “If there hadn’t been that tour,” she said, “I would have shut down after Paris. Fully. No comeback, no gym, nothing.” One of those gestures Biles makes that seems casual on the outside but lands like a lifeline. Jesus accepted. It seems like she even thought it through. It was instinct. Survival, maybe. And in the weeks that followed, Jesus rebuilt herself. Not in the gym, not with medals in mind, but on a moving bus, surrounded by athletes who understood brokenness, who had stood in spotlights too bright for comfort.

She’d laugh again, sometimes out loud. It wasn’t forced. “The bus felt like a kind of church,” she told me once. “No pressure, just people who love what they do.” She mentioned that in Martinique, her childhood island, she rediscovered something else. But on the tour, what came back was joy. That elusive, weightless joy. For a gymnast, that is holy ground.

The world may have focused on Riley Gaines’ controversy and Simone Biles’ sudden exit from Twitter. But in the background, there was something quieter and more lasting unfolding. A young gymnast was being held up. Not by headlines or hashtags, but by a teammate’s decision to take her on a tour bus instead of leaving her behind.

Simone Biles deletes X account after clash with Riley Gaines over trans athletes

In a move that startled many of her followers, Olympic gymnast Simone Biles appears to have removed her X account following a contentious public exchange with Riley Gaines. The verified handle @Simone_Biles, which previously held a following of 1.9 million, began returning an error message on Sunday, sparking speculation regarding its deletion. The timing coincided with the aftermath of a heated dispute over Gaines’ public remarks concerning teenage athletes, which Biles had forcefully criticized.

While the original thread between the two has since vanished, several posts, including a pointed statement by Biles telling Gaines to “bully someone your own size,” circulated widely before the account’s disappearance. Biles later issued a formal apology, stating, “It didn’t help for me to get personal with Riley, which I apologize for.” She also acknowledged the complexity of the topic, noting, “These are sensitive, complicated issues that I truly don’t have the answers or solutions to.” Despite the apology, the response across social media remained polarized and, in some quarters, unrelenting.

Gaines, whose advocacy against transgender participation in women’s sports has made her a frequent presence in political commentary circles, responded directly to Biles’s absence from the platform. “Sad to see such a phenom go down like this,” she wrote, following it with, “[Simone] has an incredibly unpopular and morally indefensible take; gets rightfully ridiculed for it; issues a groveling public apology after unrelenting backlash; deletes account to pretend it never happened.” The departure of such a high-profile figure from X adds another layer to the already fraught public dialogue surrounding gender and athletics.