Fox News Reported Simone Biles Announced Pregnancy, Retirement?

During the 2024 Paris Olympics, online users shared a rumor claiming Fox News reported Biles made two very big announcements.

Online users shared this false claim despite the fact Fox News never reported any such news.

An online rumor claimed that Fox News reported major news about 11-time Olympic medalist and U.S. gymnast Simone Biles. According to the rumor — which dated back to at least late July 2024 — Biles announced her retirement after her first publicly disclosed pregnancy during the 2024 Paris Olympics, with Fox News purportedly revealing “she is ‘expecting a baby.’”

At the same time users shared this rumor, Biles was busy winning some of those very same Olympic medals. The Associated Press reported, “The woman who didn’t think she’d even be here a couple of years ago will leave Paris — and perhaps her final Olympics — with three golds and a silver and something perhaps even more valuable: peace.”

One reader emailed Snopes in early August 2024, asking, “Is Simone Biles pregnant and retiring?” Another person inquired, “I have seen in two places that Simone Biles is currently pregnant and one place denying the pregnancy. Which is true?”

Social media users either copied and pasted the same text or simply shared the rumor in their own words. The copied-and-pasted text named Biles’ husband, Chicago Bears football safety Jonathan Owens, and read as follows:

However, this rumor was false. If Fox News had truly reported about this matter or if Biles announced her pregnancy or retirement, prominent news organizations around the world would have picked up the story.

According to a search of both FoxNews.com and Fox News TV channel’s text captions, the news network did not report any developments about Biles announcing a pregnancy or retirement, nor did she make any such statements on her own in late July 2024. We also located no credible records of Fox News publishing and then removing any related content from its website. A Fox News spokesperson told Snopes by email, “This was never reported by Fox News.”

How the Simone Biles Rumor Possibly Started

In our initial research, the oldest post promoting this rumor appeared on Facebook in late July.

On July 31, a Facebook user named Daily Mail Report 2.0 posted (archived) in a Facebook group named Patrick Mahomes and Brittany Mahomes that Fox News “just reported” Biles announced her retirement and a pregnancy. As of Aug. 5, this was the oldest online record we found mentioning this rumor.

The post linked to an article on usalod.com, a website that did not appear to be a trustworthy source of news. For example, the website’s lack of a terms and conditions and privacy policy contributed to its untrustworthy appearance. Further, some links on the website led to suspicious and abnormal redirects reminding us of past reporting about similar websites that promoted malware.

The website listed the name “Valerie Yancy” as the author of the story. We doubt that this is the real author’s name, as we couldn’t find any information about a blogger with the same name.

Further, at a glance, the text of the article read similar to basic stories generated by artificial-intelligence (AI) tools. While AI text and and image-detection websites perhaps aren’t yet entirely reliable, we did still note that, in addition to our own suspicions, all five of our tests detected the article as 100 percent generated by AI. Websites utilized for testing included CopyLeaks.com, GPTZero.me, QuillBot.com, ZeroGPT.com and Scribbr.com.