‘I Left There With No Trophy’: NCAA Female Swimmer Who Tied For Fifth With Trans Athlete Says Officials Put Lia Thomas Ahead Of Her
Riley Gaines, a senior at the University of Kentucky, competed in the women’s 200 freestyle on Friday at the NCAA Division I Women’s Championships.
As she touched the wall at the end of the race, Gaines looked up and realized the board said that she had placed fifth — putting her in the top five collegiate female swimmers in the nation.
Then she realized she’d tied with transgender athlete Lia Thomas, a biological man who identifies as a woman.
In a phone interview Tuesday evening, Gaines told The Daily Wire that at that moment she was overcome by a flood of emotions. Happy for her competitors but bewildered, she went back behind the podium where NCAA officials were distributing the awards.
Then a man in an NCAA shirt handing out trophies told her, “Hey, I just want to let you know, we only have one fifth place trophy, so yours will be coming in the mail. We went ahead and gave the fifth place trophy to Lia, but you can pose on the podium with the sixth place trophy.”
That took her aback. She had placed fifth, but they were asking her to give Thomas the moment?
As Thomas and other swimmers looked on, Gaines briefly argued with the official. Then she took her place on the podium, holding the sixth place trophy next to the transgender athlete whom she had tied with.
Now she is willing to speak out.
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“I just want you to know that we respect you and admire your swim so much, but we just want Lia to hold the fifth place trophy,” he responded, according to Gaines, who laughed incredulously to The Daily Wire as she repeated his words.
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The University of Kentucky swimmer said that she wasn’t the only one who was upset — her athletic director was pretty upset that she had to leave the pool without her trophy.
“The more I thought about it, the more it fired me up,” she said. “It’s almost like the NCAA is trying to save face by giving Lia the fifth place trophy.”
“Who are we trying to protect here,” she questioned, “and who are we trying to fight for here?”
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“It’s almost like they’re trying to back [transgender athletes] more than…90 to 95 % of the rest of the swimmers who are kind of bummed by and affected by the rules that were in place for Lia to swim,” she said.
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Thomas not only competed in women’s races — Gaines said that the transgender swimmer also used the female athletes’ locker room, publicly changing in the corner.
Pressed how she felt about this, Gaines said it was “definitely not something” that she personally was “enthused about.”
“The first day I got there, I was in the locker room changing, and then she came in, and it just kind of got silent,” Gaines explained.
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Next time, before the NCAA bends their standards to appease one person, Gaines hopes the association will “take into consideration all the girls who worked so hard to become an all-American, score points for their team, have another chance of going their best time in finals.”
“We need to create fair boundaries that protect the integrity of women in sports,” the swimmer said firmly.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/i-lef...s-ahead-of-her