Team USA took two more medals Thursday after Simone Biles won gold and Suni Lee took bronze in the women’s individual all-around.
Simone Biles has flipped the script on critics criticizing her husband, Jonathan Owens, for sharing a photo of himself wearing one of her gold medals.
The 27-year-old gymnast is taking on social media critics who lambasted a post shared by her husband on Instagram. The photo showed Owens wearing her Olympic gold medal around his neck, prompting accusations that the NFL athlete was stealing the spotlight from his wife.
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Read on for the controversy.
What did Simone Biles’ husband do at the Olympics?
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On July 31, Owens shared an Instagram post featuring him alongside his wife. The celebratory post included a caption from Owens congratulating his wife on becoming Olympic’s most decorated American gymnast.
“Witnessing history every time you step on the mat,” his caption reads. “Congrats, baby, on becoming the most decorated American gymnast in Olympic history!!!! Just wow!!!! 8 of them!!!!! So thankful I was there to see it.”
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In the post’s comments section, users were quick to cheer on Biles for her win, while others took issue with Owens for wearing the gold medal that the gymnast and her team had won earlier that day around his neck.
“Why he holding it like he won it,” one user wrote.
“Mr. Simone Biles, if you don’t give that woman back her medal like (be for real),” one added.
The criticism against Owens continued on TikTok. In a post that has since received nearly 500K comments, internet personality Kiera Breaugh also chimed into the discourse.
“Take her medal off!” Breaugh says in the video. “After all of the— take her medal off! Was it you, Mr. Simone Biles, who was flying through the air yesterday? Was it you who spun like a top 30 times in the air and landed without stumbling? No.”
“You were taking notes in the audience, and I thought that was cute. I was gonna give him a pass,” she said, referring to how cameras captured Owens taking detailed notes of his wife’s score and performance throughout the Olympic competitions, showing his support and dedication. “I thought him keeping score the audience was kind of cute. I was gonna take it easy on him.”
“Why is her medal around your neck? For the picture. For the picture that you post after— We’ve learned nothing. What a choice. What a choice,” she continued.
“Let her wear the medal for the picture that you post,” Breaugh concluded. “After everything that’s gone on, that could be a pretty simple PR move. He’s like, ‘This is my only time to wear a gold medal around my neck, so I guess I’ll just take this chance now. Not like I already got made fun of by the entire internet for trying to overshadow my wife and undermine her accomplishments.’”
What did Simone Biles say in response to the Jonathan Owens medal controversy?
On Aug. 1, Biles replied in the comments of Breaugh’s post to defend her husband.
“Crazy thing is, I put my medal on every single one of my family members and took pictures. So don’t ever make assumptions, “she wrote. “Like y’all are so f----ing miserable. Leave us alone.”
The Olympian’s rebuke was enough to inspire Breaugh to comment on the conflict, emphasizing how Biles’ words had humbled her.
“I’m honored. I’m honored to be told to f--- off by such a talented woman,” Breaugh said in a response on TikTok. “I can’t really be mad if she told him to, you know what I mean. And maybe he is really taking notes and keeping score, which is cute. That’s more than anyone’s ever done for me.”
“And you know what? Maybe I am miserable. I’ll be called miserable by the most decorated gymnast of all time,” she replied. “I don’t really care. I think that’s fine. I think, in comparison, naturally, I am not just miserable but also lazy, untalented, and all the other things in the caption. I am undeniably that in comparison. So I don’t mind this at all. I don’t mind this at all.”
“But, um, good to know. Good. Good information to know. I think that, given the history of it, naturally, a lot of us saw that and were a little bit like, oh, jerked out of the seat,” she concluded. “False alarm.”
Previous Owens controversy over who is 'the catch' in their relationship
In a December 2023 episode of the “Pivot” podcast, Owens revealed that he hadn’t initially known who Biles was when they met on a dating app and suggested he was the “catch” in their relationship.
One of the “Pivot” podcast hosts, former NFL player Ryan Clark, suggested that Owens was the “catch” at the beginning of the relationship, and Owens replied, “I always say the men are the catch.”
Immediately after the podcast, fans slammed Owens.
“You need to address the comments you made on that podcast and come back and speak highly of your wife because that wasn’t it,” one person wrote in the comments.
“I didn’t know of you until Simone Biles posted you sir,” wrote another.
Owens did not publicly apologize and later, in an April 2024 episode of Alex Cooper’s “Call Her Daddy” podcast, Biles said that the comments online had been “hurtful.”
“So, whenever he did that interview, I thought everything was OK. “And then I go on Twitter, and everybody’s like, ‘Divorce this man, he’s mean,’” she said. “I’m like, he’s the sweetest. He praises the ground that I walk on. Truly, I’ve never met a man like him.”
She said while she initially thought it was “hilarious,” the online response “hurt my feelings.”
“One night, I broke down and I’m like, why are you guys talking about my husband like this?” she told Cooper. “You don’t know him, you don’t know who he is, and if anybody’s met him, they know he’s the sweetest guy and will do anything for anybody.”
Owens and Biles met on the dating app Raya during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. The footballer proposed to her in 2022 and the two married the next year in April 2023.
This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:
