There are a lot of names to choose from in the world of sports when it comes to celebrating the greatest of all time. But according to Olympian Simone Biles, ESPN’s SportsCenter overlooked a lot of obvious choices when it selected a pic to celebrate the ultimate GOATs.
That’s because the vision of greatness that SportsCenter shared on Tuesday was dominated by male athletes.
In a now-deleted tweet, the sporting news show posted a graphic created by an artist on Instagram (@dayxsleep) meant to highlight the GOATs of the games. Included in the image were Muhammad Ali, Tom Brady, Michael Jordan, Babe Ruth, Tiger Woods and more standing in a stadium mingling with a few actual goats.
Biles was quick with a reply to let them know what was missing.
“There are so many women I can think of that belong in this photo yet there are none,” she tweeted.
And she wasn’t alone in that criticism. Others on social media blasted the tweet, too.
“How y’all gonna include actual goats and not include women????” one asked. “Y’all really don’t care do you???”
Others noted that it appeared as though one woman was in the image, if you look hard enough. Tennis great Serena Williams seems to have been squeezed into the back row on the right side of the image. An alternate version of the pic shared by the artist a few days ago didn’t feature that addition.
But given how easy it was to overlook that inclusion, the tennis icon was among the faces that Biles said she would have liked to see in the image when TODAY reached out to her. Also on her list: Katie Ledecky, Alex Morgan, Sue Bird, Simone Manuel, Allyson Felix, Lindsey Vonn and Megan Rapinoe.
And while modesty may have prevented her from saying it, when considering women who deserve a spot in a GOAT roundup, Biles herself can’t be overlooked. With 30 Olympic and world championship medals — 23 of which are gold — she stands as the most decorated American gymnast.
TODAY also reached out to ESPN about the controversy, and the network acknowledged that posting the male-dominated image of GOATs was a mistake, which was why the post was removed.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
