Riley Gaines: I Stood up for All Women after Losing to a Man | Stories of Us

This NCAA official looks at both Thomas and myself. He says, great job you two, but you tied. So we're going to give the trophy to Leah. And I said, why are you adamant on giving this trophy to a man in the women's 200 freestyle? My name is Riley Gaines, and this is my story. I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, born and raised. I come from a pretty large family, have lots of siblings. Myself, all my siblings, we played sports growing up. Softball, basketball, soccer, gymnastics, swimming. I started swimming when I was four years old. Swimming, it's a love-hate relationship. I loved competing. I loved meets and going best times and really the pressure of competing. I loved it. Of course, the practices, it's grueling. Your diet, your sleep schedule, not to mention the physical rehabilitation and the social sacrifices that you have to make. It's a lifelong journey, and it's impossible to put into words the amount of time and dedication that it takes to compete and be successful at the highest level. Once the college recruiting process started, ended up committing to the University of Kentucky, I had a goal of winning a national title, which would have meant becoming the fastest female in the country in my respective event. About midway through my senior season, I'm ranked third in the nation. The girl who was in second, I knew her very well. But the person who was leading the country by body lengths, which is a very large margin in swimming, I had never heard of before. And this is the first time I became aware of a swimmer named Leah Thomas. You know, who is this person? We had no idea that Leah Thomas is formerly Will Thomas and swam three years on the men's team at University of Pennsylvania before deciding to switch to the women's team. I then went to look up who Will Thomas was. This was a mediocre man, at best, ranking 462nd in the nation the year prior when competing against the men. The NCAA announced that Thomas' participation in the women's category was a non-negotiable. We were forced to go to training to learn. When referring to Leah Thomas, we had to use she, her pronouns, fully treat this person as a woman. Anything else would be discriminatory and bigoted. You'll never get a job, they told us. You know, you'll never get into grad school. If you speak out, this will follow you for the rest of your life. You'll be labeled a transphobe if you speak to media. That's what they told us, repeatedly. And so that first day of competition was the 500 freestyle, which is not an event that I do. And so I sat on the side of the pool and watched as Thomas swam against seven of the greatest freestylers. And I watched as he demolished them, beating them by body lengths. Olympians, American record holders. The second day of competition was the 200 freestyle, which is the event that Thomas and I raced in. We dove off the blocks. We swam all eight laps. We touched the wall at the end. I look up at the scoreboard and I realize we had tied down to the hundredth of a second, which is pretty rare when you're racing for a minute and 40 seconds and not even one one hundredth separated us. And so we get out of the water. We go behind the awards podium. Typically, you know, they hand out the trophies. You're marched out. You're named an All-American. This NCAA official looks at both Thomas and myself. And he says, great job, you two, but you tied. And we only have one trophy. So we're going to give the trophy to Leah. Sorry, Riley. And I was so taken aback by this. I asked the NCAA official, why are you adamant on giving this trophy to a man in the women's 200 freestyle? You know, I know we tied. I know we don't necessarily account for ties, but what's the thought process here? And he didn't know what to say. Well, well, we're just doing this in chronological order is what he told me. I said, okay, well, do you mean alphabetical order? Because G comes before T. His face, it changed. He told me, Riley, we've been advised that when photos are being taken, it's crucial that Leah is holding the trophy. But I could tell he didn't even believe what he had just told me. It was feelings of betrayal. It was feelings of allittlement. I can't even put into words the amount of frustration, confusion, heartbreak that I felt. And not just me, my teammates. Thomas said nothing to anyone, the entire meet. And so I got to personally witness and really feel the effect that this infringement, this injustice had on myself. And again, my teammates and my competitors. I had 18 years of hard work and sacrifice and dedication stripped from me. Up until then, truthfully, I was cowering. I was waiting for someone else to take a stand because I thought someone would. I thought surely a coach would. Surely someone from the NCAA, someone with political power would come down there and yank this man out of our locker rooms. Someone who was supposed to be protecting us would protect us. But I realized that was naive to think. And I remember standing on the podium, sharing this spot with a male, and it hit me. We were smiling and we were applauding. Yet what were we applauding and cheering on? Our own erasure, our own demolition. That's what we were clapping for. We're denying objective truth here. And that should be a really chilling thought. I felt an internal sense of responsibility. It compelled me to take a stand. There was a lot of support at first, but a lot of it was private. And at first I felt humbled by this. I felt pretty honored, you know. But as the private messages continued, I began to feel frustrated. Why aren't people willing to put their name to it? Speaking to the pushback, it really is some of the most hateful things I've ever been told, I've ever had wished upon me. And they do it in the name of inclusion and tolerance and acceptance and welcoming and all of those different virtuous words they love to use. But it's none of those things. And I saw the tears from the girls who placed ninth and 17th and missed out on being named All-American by one place. And I felt the extreme discomfort in the locker room when you turn around and there's a six foot four, 22 year old man fully exposing male genitalia inches away from where you were simultaneously undressing. If you think about why we ever even created the women's sporting category, it was to give women a chance to showcase our own uniqueness. It's not because we're inferior to men. We are capable of accomplishing incredible things, but we're different from men. If you think about lung capacity, of course, Men have on average a 40% larger throat than women, which matters in a sport like swimming or like running or anything where you're gasping for air. The benefit of sports is undeniable. How you learn leadership, how you learn to grow in terms of your confidence and your security, the resiliency, the grit, the determination. I'm the biggest advocate for playing sports for everyone. It's just a matter of playing where it's fair and where it's safe. And to ignore male advantage is regressive and it's utterly misogynistic. When I started speaking out, I was terrified. I was so nervous that all the things they told me would happen, would happen. I would never get a job. I would never get into grad school. I would lose my friends and my family and my scholarship and my playing time. None of those things happened. And know that courage begets courage. One person speaking out will lead to three more speaking out and those three to bigger and bigger, it's like a wildfire. And there's strength in numbers. That's how this would end a lot quicker is if people of prominence, especially female athletes with platforms and influence, if they could take a stand, this would be over. We have to stand together and say enough is enough. Be that for your daughters because they need you. Thanks for watching this video and listening to my story. To keep PragerU videos free, consider making a tax-deductible donation.