“You Don’t Understand How Hurtful It Is”: Simone Biles and Mikaela Shiffrin Open Up About the Painful Realities of Being an Olympian

Mikaela Shiffrin has been having a tremendous run with her skis in the last few months. As a result, she has also been nominated for the Laureus Sportswoman of the Year award this year. However, although Shiffrin had a glorious end to the year 2022, she did not have a similar beginning to it. At the start of 2022, the skiing legend had to return without a medal from the Beijing Olympics, which led to a lot of social media hate. But she didn’t stand alone in that low moment of her life. 7x Olympic medalist Simone Biles stood right alongside her.

Now that skiing icon has been nominated for the award, Mikaela Shiffrin, Simone Biles and 5x gold Olympic medalist Missy Franklin had a live Instagram session together for Laureus Sports ahead of International Women’s Day. During the live chat, Biles and Shiffrin opened up about the unsuccessful Beijing Olympics and what they felt about it. 

Simone Biles lifted the spirits of the skiing legend 

An unsuccessful event for a legend like Mikaela Shiffrin can be extremely hurtful for her as an athlete. But when the hate comments from social media add up to that, it becomes worse. In the live, Shiffrin depicted the way she felt during these Olympics as it was amidst COVID with strict lockdown protocols. Altogether, it made the quarantine bubble smaller and broke all the connections from outside the Olympic village. She expressed her emotions saying, “The only connection you get is on Twitter, on Instagram, just basically seeing what comments come up. Sometimes what you see is negative comments, you don’t see any of the support. It’s always like, ‘You choked. Don’t even come back to the US. It’s unbelievable you could fail so badly.'”

On the other hand, Simone Biles, went through the same during the Tokyo Olympics when she withdrew her contention from the finals. She knew how Shiffrin would have been feeling after the Olympics. Hence, she connected with her so that she didn’t feel alone. In the video, Biles disclosed her thoughts back then. She said, “I saw the experience that Mikaela went through and I had just gone through that, so I didn’t want her to feel alone and [I was] like, ‘Hey, it’s OK. This stuff happens. You’re still amazing. Who cares about the comments?'” 

Simone Biles Returns to Gymnastics but Faces a Hilarious Fail

Biles then called out the people who send hate comments when the athletes don’t perform well. She said, “Half of the time, the comments are people at home that have never even done a sport or gotten an award so they don’t realize how hard we work.” Moreover, she also pointed out that athletes work hard their whole lives to compete at a certain level, and some people don’t understand as they cannot imagine the pain behind all the hard work.  

The fans reacted to the phenomenal live video session

Simone Biles, Missy Franklin and Mikaela Shiffrin all are highly inspirational entities in their respective sports. Although they might be trolled by some people at times, the majority of people look up to them as role models. As all of them came together and poured their heart out ahead of this year’s International Women’s Day, fans showed their gratitude for sharing their experience with them. 

Not only fans, but another skiing legend, Lindsey Vonn also showed her love to them. Vonn commented, “3 incredibly inspiring women!! Love what you guys are doing 💪🏻❤️” Whereas, some other fans also wrote some beautiful messages for these three legends.

“What a great conversation ! Thank you ladies for that moment”

“That is why I loved coaching my daughter’s softball teams and son’s basketball. Teaching them not only about the game but also the moral support that they can accomplish anything.”

“You nailed it! Those comments that were thrown out on Instagram were from people who have no idea what it means to compete. @mikaelashiffrin, always remember that you know you! And what you have done.”

The video reflected the amount of talent and power these three legends have. The 3x Laureus Sportswoman of the Year, Simone Biles, also wished Shiffrin the best for the ceremony and the best for her future. What do you think about the trolling culture on social media, and the things Biles and Shiffrin said in the video? Let us know in the comments section. 

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