Simone Biles shines at ESPYS with top awards

LOS ANGELES — Simone Biles won two trophies at the ESPYS on Wednesday night, including the women’s best athlete award.

The 11-time Olympic medalist claimed the night’s first award, best championship performance for her efforts at the Paris Games. She won three golds and a silver while helping the U.S. women’s gymnasts win their first team title since 2016.

“That was very unexpected, especially in a category of all men,” Biles said after kissing husband, Chicago Bears safety Jonathan Owens.

She beat out Stephen Curry, Freddie Freeman and Rory McIlroy.

Biles’ Olympic teammate, Suni Lee, won the best comeback award for overcoming two rare kidney diseases. She brought one of her doctors to the show.

Comedian Shane Gillis’ opening monologue as host of the show that honors the past year’s top athletes and sports moments went over awkwardly.

Early on, he called out various famous faces in the Dolby Theatre crowd, including retired WNBA star Diana Taurasi, who shared the Icon Award. Gillis said, “Give it up for her” after calling her “Deanna.” The camera showed an unsmiling Taurasi shaking her head. Gillis quickly caught his mistake, saying, “My bad on that.”

Gillis moved on to WNBA superstar Caitlin Clark, who wasn’t on hand.

“When Caitlin Clark retires from the WNBA, she’s going to work at a Waffle House so she can continue doing what she loves most: fist fighting Black women,” he joked.

While some in the audience laughed, others appeared uncomfortable.

Gillis plowed on for 10 minutes, with jokes about President Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, whose sex trafficking investigation has roiled the Justice Department and FBI.

Gillis’ performance drew mixed reviews on social media, with some calling him “hilarious” and others “cringey.”

Gillis’ initial joke about North Carolina coach Bill Belichick and his 24-year-old girlfriend Jordon Hudson drew a lot of laughs.

“A bookie is what Bill Belichick reads to his girlfriend before bed time,” he said. “They read ‘The Very Horny Caterpillar,’ ‘The Little Engine That Could But Needed a Pill First’ and of course the classic ‘Goodnight Boobs.’”

But the reaction was mixed as Gillis continued.

“He won six Super Bowls. He’s dating a hot 24 year old. Maybe if you guys won six Super Bowls you wouldn’t be sitting next to a fat ugly dog wife.”

Gillis admitted he should have cut that part of the joke.

NBA Finals MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander smiled when Gillis said, “SGA is here. Everybody sitting around him is in foul trouble.”

Gillis retold what he called “a dumb joke” that he said he loved from former “Saturday Night Live” comic Norm MacDonald’s stint as ESPYS host in 1998.

Gillis congratulated Colorado two-way player Travis Hunter for winning the Heisman Trophy.

“That’s something they can never take away from you unless you kill your wife and a waiter,” he said, referring to the late O.J. Simpson.

Before closing it out, a smiling Gillis said, “I see a lot of you don’t like me and that’s OK. That’s it for me. That went about exactly how we all thought it was going to go. I don’t know why this happened.”

Taurasi and U.S. national women’s soccer team star Alex Morgan shared the Icon Award in recognition of their careers and major impact on sports.

The women touched their trophies together in a toast.

“Our mission has always been very similar,” Morgan said. “We fought to leave our game in a better place than where we found it just as a generation before us did. We’re standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Taurasi, who retired in February after a 20-year basketball career, mentioned her parents who immigrated to the U.S. from Argentina. She also had words for the next generation.

“Keep going, don’t wait for someone to hand you anything, outwork them, be loyal, bring that damn fire every day,” she said. “We’re proof you can do it. We did it our way. No shortcuts, no apologies, and no regrets.”

An emotional Katie Schumacher-Cawley accepted the Jimmy V Award for Perseverance with her husband and children joining in the standing ovation. The Penn State women’s volleyball coach was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer in September. She continued coaching without missing a practice and became the first woman to guide a team to the NCAA national championship.

“Cancer changed my life but it didn’t take it. It didn’t take my belief, it didn’t take my spirit and it didn’t take my team,” she said.

Basketball player Cameron Boozer and track and field athlete Jane Hedengren were named the Gatorade Best Male and Female Players of the Year.

Olympic track champion Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford revealed the winners from the ESPYS stage.

Boozer will be playing at Duke in the fall, following in the collegiate footsteps of his father, Carlos, a former NBA All-Star. The younger Boozer, a 6-foot-10 forward from Miami, Florida, averaged 22.6 points, 12.0 rebounds, 3.1 assists and 1.9 steals as a senior at Christopher Columbus High.

Hedengren will compete for BYU in her hometown of Provo, Utah. The senior at Timpview High won the 3,000 meters at the Nike Outdoor Nationals in a national record of 8 minutes, 40.03 seconds, lowering the old mark by more than 18 seconds. Hedengren also set national prep marks in the mile, 2-mile and 5,000.