NCAA champion female swimmer: ‘It’s time to take back Title IX and stand up and protect our girls and women’

All-American NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines warns Americans that girls’ and women’s sports must be protected from Biden’s attempts to expand Title IX.  

In an op-ed for Fox News, Riley Gaines, who was forced to share a dressing room with and swim against transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, describes some of the obstacles she faced – and why the integrity of women’s sports depends on Title IX’s original meaning and language. 

“Recently, the woke left has pushed a radical agenda embraced by President Joe Biden that threatens to undermine the entirety of Title IX by allowing males to steal the opportunities reserved for women. For me, this is not a theoretical issue, it is one that was forced in my face at the NCAA Championships,” Gaines writes. 

“[A]t the NCAA Championships, I saw a 6’4″ biological male exposing male parts in our women’s locker room. … I asked the officials where I should change as I had no intention of undressing in front of a man. They informed me that there were no protections in place for me to change in a space that Thomas did not have access to. To summarize, the NCAA put the onus on the female to avoid undressing in front of a biological man with male biological parts who is sexually attracted to women.” 

Gaines then describes the 200-meter freestyle event she swam against Thomas, noting that the statistic advantage of a male in that race would be equal to a 10 second advantage. 

“[W]ith effectively a 10-second biological deficit, I tied Thomas to the hundredth of a second, which is relatively rare. Given this, you would think that the NCAA would recognize this incredible accomplishment and at least equally reward us for tying. Yet instead, they gave Thomas the trophy that day for ‘photo purposes’ and assured me that mine would eventually come in the mail.  

“The University of Pennsylvania and the NCAA then subsequently nominated Thomas for NCAA Woman of the Year, the highest accolade for females in all of college athletics,” Gaines laments. 

But the champion swimmer says her concern is not so much about what happened to her, but what might happen to girls and women in sports if interpretations of Title IX expand to include gender identity. 

“President Joe Biden has proposed unlawful rule changes to Title IX replacing ‘sex’ with ‘gender’ and ‘gender identity’. This is regressive and will strip away women’s spaces, safety, and opportunities,” she writes, before concluding: 

“It’s time to take back Title IX and stand up and protect our girls and women.”