Chief quits after anti-Kaepernick tweet
USA Gymnastics has lost its latest leader, Mary Bono, five days after announcing that she had been appointed to run the troubled federation on an interim basis.
Bono, a former congresswoman, resigned Tuesday after complaints about her opposition to Nike’s support for Colin Kaepernick. Bono also was widely criticized for her connection to a law firm that advised the gymnastics federation as it delayed revealing what it knew about sexual abuse of hundreds of gymnasts committed by its team doctor, Larry Nassar, who is serving a prison term of 40 to 175 years for the abuse.
The federation announced Friday that Bono would be its interim president and chief executive, replacing Kerry Perry, forced out in September after nine months in the job.
The day after the announcement of Bono’s appointment, Olympic champion Simone Biles posted a tweet expressing frustration that Bono had inked out a Nike logo after the apparel company signed a new endorsement deal with Kaepernick, the former 49ers quarterback who knelt during the national anthem to protest racial injustice and police brutality.
Bono had posted a photo on Twitter of her using a pen to black out the Nike swoosh on her golf shoes.
Bono resigned in a lengthy statement “in the wake of personal attacks that, left undefended, would have made my leading USAG a liability for the organization.”
“With respect to Mr. Kaepernick, he nationally exercised his first amendment right to kneel,” she wrote. “I exercised mine: to mark over on my own golf shoes, the logo of the company sponsoring him for ‘believing in something even if it means sacrificing everything’ — while at a tournament for families who have lost a member of the armed services (including my brother-in-law, a Navy SEAL) who literally ‘sacrificed everything.’ It was an emotional reaction to the sponsor’s use of that phrase that caused me to tweet, and I regret that at the time I didn’t better clarify my feelings.”
Bono, who served in the House of Representatives from 1998 to 2013, was a lobbyist for Faegre Baker Daniels, the law firm representing USA Gymnastics when the Nassar scandal broke.