Former Dancing with the Stars host Tom Bergeron has reflected on his infamous on-air clash with Simone Biles during the reality competition’s 24th season.
The four-time Olympic gold medallist, 26, competed on the American version of the UK’s Strictly Come Dancing in 2017 alongside professional dancer Sasha Farber.
For their week eight Paso Doble dance, the pair were joined by choreographer Brittany Cherry. Following their performance, Biles expressed her disappointment at the judges’ mostly negative feedback.
Reacting to her facial expression, Bergeron told Biles: “I was waiting for you to smile at some of the compliments. You didn’t.”
“Smiling doesn’t win you gold medals,” Biles replied.
Addressing the moment on the Monday (16 October) episode of Cheryl Burkes’s Sex, Lies and Spray Tans podcast, Bergeron, 68, admitted that it was one of the “rare times when I spoke before I thought”.
He recalled that at the time, while his fellow judges Bruno Tonioli and Len Goodman were giving Biles “harsh” feedback, judge Carrie Ann Inaba was “very complimentary”.
Bergeron said he heard a producer through his earpiece observe: “Wow, she’s not even smiling at Carrie Ann’s compliments.”
Simone Biles— (Getty Images)
“So instead of saying, ‘Simone, what’s your reaction to the judges’ comments? Now, Carrie Ann was complimentary and the other two less so.’ Instead of saying that, I had that last thought from [the producer] in my head, and I went, ‘I noticed you didn’t smile,’” explained the former America’s Funniest Home Videos host.
“Now, what woman wants to hear a guy say, ‘Hey, sweetheart, smile!’” he said. “The moment it came out of my mouth, I thought, ‘Oh, you [idiot].’”
Of Biles’s response, Bergeron said: “I was so properly put in my place.”
The gymnast later put the phrase “Smiling doesn’t win gold medals” on a T-shirt that Bergeron suggested she wear while they took a photograph together.
“I stood next to her looking very sheepish while she wore that wonderful shirt, and we put that on social media and everything,” Bergeron added. “But that was one time when I wished I had taken a beat, translated what I heard in my ear, and put it in my own words.”
Biles recently made her much-anticipated comeback to international competition at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Antwerp, Belgium following a two-year hiatus from the sport that she took in order to prioritise her mental health.
The American returned in style as she won four golds and one silver, claiming her 37th medal in World Championships and Olympic Games, surpassing the previous record set by Belarusian gymnast Vitaly Scherbothe to become the most decorated gymnast in history.
Born in 1972, Scherbothe is the only male gymnast ever to have won a world title in all eight events: individual all-around, team, floor, horizontal bar, parallel bars, pommel horse, rings, and vault.
