Riley Gaines captivates Missouri crowd with fierce advocacy for women’s sports

How is it that 24-year-old former collegiate swimming star Riley Gaines, with her endearing and disarming demeanor, so easily and frequently makes grown men cry?

And when she walks into a room, as she did Wednesday evening before a crowd of nearly 300 people in Smithville, Missouri, it causes grown-ups to rise to their feet and applaud before she’s even said a word?

Well, if you ask her about it, as Herzog Foundation interviewer Chris Stigall did, you’ll hear a humble and witty answer that typifies the former NCAA All-American swimmer from the University of Kentucky. 

“For merely saying that men and women are different – that’s my whole shtick, men and women are different – but for saying that, really, it blows my mind that that’s considered brave,” said Gaines, who has become the face of fairness in women’s sports since facing off against biological male swimmer Lia Thomas while in college. 

“I have people all the time tell me, ‘Thank you for your bravery. How do you find the courage?’ I respond back with, ‘Easily.’  

“It’s easy to say what I’m saying. It’s not hard. Everyone knows it. It’s not saying anything profound or anything that makes me super wise. I promise you, I’m not.  

“I’m saying that there are two sexes, and that you can’t change your sex, and that each sex is deserving of equal opportunity, privacy and safety.” 

Sounds simple. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t courageous.

In fact, while Gaines travels the country advocating for safety in girls’ and women’s sports and spaces, she does so at the expense of her own. 

You could call it Swimming Against the Current. That is, in fact, the title of Gaines’ new book, which tells her story of embracing common sense and boldly speaking the truth about gender and sports. 

Gaines’ message resonates, too, as evidenced by the frequent interruptions of applause from the Missouri crowd that came to hear her at the Herzog Foundation’s special book-signing event. 

Yet that same message has led to hostile receptions in some other places, including an event last year at San Francisco State University that was hijacked by protestors, leading to Gaines being “held hostage” in a room with a few police officers. 

“What they did was they strategically filled the room with all protestors. … So I’m literally giving a speech to people who are holding up signs saying that I have blood on my hands, I’ve killed them, all this silly stuff. …  

“But upon delivering my message, a group of protestors, probably about 300 of them, entered [through] the door. … They rushed to the front, turned off the lights in the room so I couldn’t see anything. So I’m totally ambushed. I mean, I’m being pushed, I’m being shoved, I’m being punched in the face by these men who are wearing dresses. … 

“But they ended up holding me for ransom for about four or five hours, demanding that if I wanted to make it home to see my family safely again, I had to pay them money.” 

Thankfully, Gaines was able to escape after midnight, once dozens of other police officers showed up to escort her out of the building. But once outside, she was “left to the wolves,” having missed her flight, and in need of a place to stay.  

Is the harassment worth it? Gaines says her newly wedded husband wasn’t so sure. 

“Riley, you can’t keep putting yourself in these positions,” he told her. 

“And I said, ‘Louis, whatever. Yes, I can and I will,’ so God bless him,” Gaines told the crowd, which laughed. 

No wonder she’s considered brave.

And so, the women’s sports activist continues to travel, courageously sharing her message to packed audiences, even as her fame grows well beyond anything she ever imagined. 

And grown men – and women – crying?  

It happens “all the time,” Gaines says. “Just today, I was on the little shuttle on the way from the airport to the rental car place, and it was a fully grown man, like a grown man in tears, and he just said, ‘Look, I’m traveling. … I’m on my way to Iowa. We had some flight problems, and so I’m here. I rented a car. I’m driving to Iowa to meet my granddaughter for the first time.’  

“In tears he said, ‘This is what, that’s who you’re fighting for.’”  

“And that’s the reception that I’m met with a lot, which is moving. It makes everything worth it. It makes the arrows that you take absolutely worth it, 10 times out of 10.”