If there\u2019s one thing women\u2019s collegiate swimmers dare not say, it\u2019s that they think competing against Lia Thomas is wrong, but Riley Gaines clearly didn\u2019t get the memo.<\/p>\n
The University of Kentucky senior standout is making a name for herself outside the pool by breaking the virtual code of silence engulfing collegiate women\u2019s swimmers on Thomas, the first male-born athlete to win an NCAA Division I women\u2019s title.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like it\u2019s so blatant that it\u2019s unfair,\u201d Gaines told The Washington Times. \u201cI\u2019m just trying to take a stand and do my part to help.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since standing next to Thomas on the podium at last month\u2019s NCAA championships, Gaines has spoken out in interviews with Sen. Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee Republican, and right-leaning outlets, including the Daily Wire, Fox\u2019s \u201cTucker Carlson Tonight,\u201d and the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton podcast.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s totally wrong. I know I can\u2019t speak for everyone, but I\u2019m almost certain I\u2019m speaking for a large majority of female athletes. This is just not OK,\u201d she said in her April 6 appearance on Fox. \u201cWe\u2019re dealing with something completely out of our control when we\u2019re racing biological males.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gaines raised her profile Wednesday by appearing at the Kentucky state legislature to support the override of Gov. Andy Beshear\u2019s veto of Senate Bill 83, also known as the Save Women\u2019s Sports Act.<\/p>\n
The override made Kentucky the 15th state to ban male-born athletes from female sports.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a guest that has experienced this competitive unfairness just recently, and she\u2019s from the state of Kentucky,\u201d said Republican state Sen. Robby Mills, the bill\u2019s sponsor, on the floor.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s an All-American student-athlete from the University of Kentucky,\u201d he said. \u201cRiley has recently started to bravely tell her story over what happened in the last month in SEC competition, and I\u2019d like to thank her for being her because she has been affected by competition with a transgender [athlete].\u201d<\/p>\n
Certainly the 21-year-old swimmer has a story to tell. She tied for fifth with Thomas in the 200-yard freestyle last month at the NCAA Division I women\u2019s swimming championships in Atlanta, a day after Thomas won the 500 freestyle.<\/p>\n
As Gaines walked to the podium, she said she was approached by an NCAA official who congratulated her on her performance, then told her that because there was only one fifth-place trophy, it would be presented during the awards ceremony to Thomas.<\/p>\n
She said she was \u201ctaken aback.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, \u2018That\u2019s fine, but why are you choosing to give the trophy to Lia?\u2019\u201d Gaines said. \u201cAnd he responded with, \u2018We want to do it in chronological order.\u2019 And I said, \u2018Well, chronological order? We just tied. I don\u2019t know what we\u2019re being chronological about.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
She asked him to explain, but \u201che just said, \u2018We\u2019re going to give the trophy to Lia, but great swim.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
She said Thomas was standing nearby but said nothing. Gaines posed on the podium on the sixth-place slot next to Thomas and was given the sixth-place trophy. She said she recently received her fifth-place trophy in the mail.<\/p>\n
The NCAA did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not about the trophy. I have tons of trophies,\u201d Gaines said. \u201cThere\u2019s been a lot of, \u2018Oh, sore loser, she didn\u2019t get her fifth-place trophy,\u2019 and I\u2019m like, \u2018That\u2019s not the point.\u2019 It\u2019s really just about showing how they handled the situation. It was like they didn\u2019t want to look bad, so they did this just to save face and appease this minority.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other collegiate women\u2019s swimmers may be keeping quiet, but behind the scenes, Gaines said many have reached out to cheer her on.<\/p>\n
They include \u201ca ton\u201d from the University of Pennsylvania, she said, where Thomas swam for three years on the men\u2019s team before transitioning to female.<\/p>\n
Thomas was ruled eligible to compete by taking testosterone suppressants for a year, as required at the time under the NCAA rules. The Ivy League swimmer went on to smash records during the 2021-22 season before winning the 500-yard freestyle at the NCAA Division I women\u2019s championships in Atlanta.<\/p>\n
Gaines said the mood at the finals was not angry but \u201csomber.\u201d During the preliminary rounds, she saw swimmers with tears in their eyes as Thomas swam.<\/p>\n
Several UPenn swimmers raised alarm during the season about allowing Thomas to swim on the women\u2019s team in anonymous comments to news outlets, saying they feared being labeled transphobic and were told by their coaches not to speak to the media.<\/p>\n
Gaines credited the University of Kentucky for its approach, saying, \u201cI have an amazingly supportive athletic department that supports me whether they agree with me or not.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a fear of risking your athletic career or your work career if you say something,\u201d Gaines said. \u201cPeople are definitely scared. But I\u2019m like, well, I\u2019m not scared. I\u2019m a senior. I can do this.\u201d<\/p>\n
The only other NCAA Division I women\u2019s swimmer to speak out by name is Virginia Tech\u2019s Reka Gyorgy, a fifth-year senior who posted a letter on Instagram immediately after the championships accusing the NCAA of failing to protect female athletes.<\/p>\n
Gyorgy said she placed 17th in the 500 freestyle, just missing the consolation final, which felt like \u201cthe final spot was taken from me because of the NCAA\u2019s decision to let someone who is not a biological female compete.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those taking public stands in support of Thomas include Stanford\u2019s Brooke Forde and Erica Sullivan of Texas, both of whom competed against Thomas at the championships.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike anyone else in this sport, Lia doesn\u2019t win every time,\u201d Sullivan said in a March 18 op-ed in Newsweek. \u201cAnd when she does, she deserves, like anyone else in this sport, to be celebrated for her hard-won success, not labeled a cheater simply because of her identity.\u201d<\/p>\n
The NCAA has not commented publicly since Thomas\u2019s win, but in a letter shared March 28 with Swimming World, NCAA President Mark Emmert defended the organization\u2019s policies on transgender participation, which were updated in January.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the top governing board of the NCAA, the Board of Governors firmly and unequivocally supports the opportunity for transgender student-athletes to compete in college sports,\u201d Mr. Emmert said.<\/p>\n
As a senior, Gaines will soon graduate, bringing her collegiate swimming career to a close. Her post-graduate plans include attending dental school and getting married. She\u2019s engaged to former Kentucky swimmer Louis Barker.<\/p>\n
Even though her stance on male-born athletes in women\u2019s sports runs counter to the progressive zeitgeist, she says she has received far more positive comments than negative.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I\u2019ve realized is if we want a change, you have to use your voice,\u201d she told Ms. Blackburn. \u201cWe have to let people know as a group that the majority of us female athletes, or females in general, really are not OK with this, and are not OK with the trajectory of this, and how this is going and how this could end up in a couple of years.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If there\u2019s one thing women\u2019s collegiate swimmers dare not say, it\u2019s that they think competing against Lia Thomas is wrong, but Riley Gaines clearly didn\u2019t get the memo. The University of Kentucky senior standout is making a name for herself outside the pool by breaking the virtual code of silence engulfing collegiate women\u2019s swimmers on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2688,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2687","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-daily-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2687"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2687"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2689,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2687\/revisions\/2689"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}