Simone Biles of the United States competes on the balance beam during
Women's qualification for Artistic Gymnastics on Day 2 of the Rio 2016
Olympic Games at the Rio Olympic Arena on August 7, 2016 in Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil
Another day, another NBC announcer in hot water for a verbal (or, in this case, Twitter) misstep.
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 U.S. gymnast's adoptive
parents.
During NBC's coverage of women's gymnastics, announcer Al Trautwig referred to Ron and Nellie Biles as the grandparents
of U.S. superstar Simone Biles. Ron and Nellie are Simone's
grandparents, but they adopted Simone and her sister in 2001 (the girls'
parents were fighting drug and alcohol issues).
Trautwig's trouble came when someone tweeted at him to refer to Ron
and Nellie as Simone's parents and Trautwig responded with an
ill-advised tweet refusing to call them Simone's parents.
The controversy gave rise to the 21st century rallying cry — a hashtag (#FireTrautwig) — and prompted others to note Trautwig's often combative Twitter account and other stories, including an incident in which he allegedly called the parents of a man who heckled him on Twitter over hockey.
For his part, Trautwig deleted the tweet about Biles' parents and then issued an apology via NBC on Monday, saying:
"I regret that I wasn’t more clear in my wording on the air. I compounded the error on Twitter, which I quickly corrected. To set the record straight, Ron and Nellie are Simone’s parents."
Nellie sent out a series of inspirational tweets
to Simone before Sunday's event, referring to herself as "mom,"
something Simone and her family have been open about discussing in the
past.
The night after the adoption papers were signed, Simone paused on the staircase on her way upstairs to bed, turned to Nellie and asked, "Ham-maw?" which is how she said "Grandma," unable to pronounce the letter G.
"Is it okay if I call you 'Mom?'"
"You sure can," Nellie replied, who recalled it as "a very big day."
"We did this as a family," she said, "and it was the best decision that we made."
Even Simone's coach got in on the action yesterday, tweeting a correction at Trautwig.
Biles and the rest of Team USA are heavy favorites to capture the team
gold medal on Tuesday and Biles is one of two Team USA athletes who will
compete for the individual all-around medals on Thursday.
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