From outright cheating to doping, political boycotts and now the threat of the Zika virus, controversy is headline news.
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Such was the case late Sunday night when longtime sports commentator Al Trautwig, one of NBC’s announcers for women’s gymnastics, ignited a firestorm when discussing the family of three-time world champion, Simone Biles. Ron and Nellie are her parents. Simone remains in contact with Shanon Biles but is quick to correct anyone who calls Shanon her mother. When Simone was six, Shanon’s father, Ronald Biles, stepped in to adopt Simone and her younger sister Adria. “I said, ‘Send them to me'”. He says he deliberately announces Olympic gymnastics for the millions of people tuning in on NBC’s broadcasts who aren’t hardcore gymnastics fans. The couple’s commitment, coupled with their strong Catholic faith and prayer life, drove them to find a way to make it work.
Simone Biles competes in the floor exercise during the US women’s gymnastics championship in St. Louis on June 26, 2016.
According to a Variety report, NBC sports announcer Al Trautwig came under fire when he explicitly insinuated that Simone Biles’s adopted parents, whom she’s referred to as her parents in multiple past interviews, were not actually her real parents at all. You don’t need to call them her grandfather and his wife, or her mom and dad, or even her “adoptive parents”.
On the podcast GymCastic, host Jessica O’Beirne said, “Could he be anymore insensitive and cruel?”
“I feel like it’s a blessing to be able to represent so many people who don’t have voices, who don’t speak up”, Muhammad told The Associated Press.
“She thinks the whole thing is stupid”.
Just one day after a swimming announcer was criticized for crediting a swimmer’s husband for her gold medal win, another announcer found himself apologizing for comments about a US gymnast’s adoptive parents. Don’t ask Al Trautwig.
@PatriotMom2911, whose profile pic urges us to “defund Obamacare now”, thought she was standing up for Biles when she condemned @jenunexpected for creating “drama”-completely missing the point that Biles and her family have the right to be a family, and that it’s Trautwig who started the drama”.
“Ennobling in the sense of, you know, what a great thing to be an adoptive mother”, Netzer said, with a laugh.
The Biles-Trautwig incident may not change the way we talk about adoption overnight, but the conversation born from it is chipping away at the roadblock to our understanding that a family is a family no matter how it comes to be. Her dad and I are her parents. The result is a book that will be published in October titled, Chosen For Greatness: How Adoption Changes the World. I was invited when she won her first title, her championship, the PNG in 2014 I was invited there, in Pittsburgh.
“When I was younger, I was adopted by my grandparents, which are now my parents”.
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As Goldberg notes in her piece, the back and forth suggests that the familial bonds between adoptive relatives are somehow less significant than those in biological families. Each year in the United States, about 135,000 children are adopted. In the segment that aired before the women’s gymnastics all-around preliminary competition, Biles shrugged off questions about her family, saying that there is “no story” because it’s “always been this way” for her.
