“Forced to race against a male”- Female swimmer Riley Gaines lashes out against transgender swimmer Lia Thomas
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Lia Thomas and Riley Gaines
Recently, during a Tuesday interview with Fox News, Riley Gaines, a swimmer who competed against Lia Thomas in the NCAA swimming championships criticised the swimmer. “I feel like to have that kind of forced upon us, so not only were we forced to race against a male, we were forced to change in the locker room with one, and so, it’s just this feeling of like, what is happening?” said University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines.
Thomas was widely criticised for competing in the NCAA finals, when the biological man won the 500 yard women’s final. In a February letter addressed to the NCAA, sixteen of Thomas’s teammates asked that Thomas be disqualified from competing. “Obviously I know how I felt and I knew how my teammates felt, but no one really wanted to talk about it,” Gaines told Fox News. “And so, this was on day one, and then that night we watched Lia Thomas win a national title and blow all the other females completely out of the water. And that next day we came back and the mood had shifted to where people were mad, the girls, you know, there were tears.”
In first place, Thomas swam finished at 4:33.24s, according to results published on swimmeetresults.tech. The three runners-up swam 4:34.99s, 4:35.92s and 4:36.18s. Gaines tied with Thomas for fifth place in the 200-meter freestyle at the NCAA championships.
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“Changing in the same locker room”: Riley Gaines comments on Lia Thomas
Gaines also spoke of the locker room’s discomfort. Riley Gaines said she felt uncomfortable changing in the same locker room as transgender swimmer Lia Thomas. “That’s not something we were forewarned about, which I don’t think is right in any means, changing in a locker room with someone who has different parts. This is yet another slap in the face to women,” Gaines, said.
Carlson first spoke with Gaines about Thomas’ involvement in women’s swimming in April. Gaines claimed at the time that forcing her to compete against Thomas was unjust and that most other female athletes she knew felt the same way. Gaines claimed she and her teammates were confident the NCAA wouldn’t allow Thomas to compete in the women’s national championships with unfair physical advantages like height, muscle mass, and heart and lung size after learning that Thomas had competed in the men’s division for the previous three seasons before making the transition to a woman.
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