Former college swimmer Riley Gaines, who bravely spoke out against biological men competing against natural-born women, recently noted that sports officials privately oppose trans athletes but won’t say so in public because they are too frightened of the leftist cancel culture.
The former University of Kentucky champion recently spoke to The College Fix while she was attending last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C. She told the website that college leaders usually agree with her claims that trans athletes are not fair to women, but in public, they toe the radical transgender activist line because they fear reprisal.
“I think the most important thing colleges can specifically do to protect women’s sports is stand firm in how they genuinely feel,” Gaines said.
“I was present at the NCAA convention, where I got a booth similar to the set up of this convention, where athletic directors would walk around, all the presidents of universities, chancellors, and I had the chance to talk to all of them,” she continued.
Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines swims the 200 Butterfly prelims at the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships on March 19th, 2022, at the McAuley Aquatic Center in Atlanta, Georgia. (Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
“They all said to me, ‘Keep doing what you are doing, we support you, we just can’t do it publicly,’” the athlete-turned-activist said.
“I can’t even tell you how frustrating that is to have these people who have the power to make these changes basically look me and my teammates, and the other people I am advocating with, in my face and tell me ‘Keep doing what you’re doing, we have the power to help, and we think we should help, but we’re not going to help,’” Gaines insisted.
Gaines also claimed that even NCAA President Mark Emmert told her to keep up the pressure against trans “women” being allowed to compete against natural-born women.
“So in my conversations with these people — 95 percent of them agreed with protecting women’s sports — they are too scared to say it,” she said.
“We know it’s fair, we know it’s right, we know it’s moral — why aren’t they doing it? Why are the women collateral damage to affirm these males’ identities? So that is what colleges and universities need to do, they need to protect women,” Gaines concluded.
Gaines has been railing against transgender athletes since biological male Lia Thomas began taking trophies away from women in 2022 when he was permitted to swim as a female for the University of Pennsylvania in the NCAA competitions.
University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas reacts after her team wins the 400-yard freestyle relay during the 2022 Ivy League Womens Swimming and Diving Championships at Blodgett Pool on February 19, 2022, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (Kathryn Riley/Getty Images)
In July of that year, Gaines told Fox News’s Tucker Carlson that none of the other schools were told that Thomas, who still retains his male genitalia, would be walking around nude in female locker rooms.
“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,” Gaines told Carlson.
“So not only were we forced to race against a male, we were forced to change in the locker room with one,” Gaines added.
In January, Gaines said that she and many other women “feel betrayed” by the sports authorities and college administrators who have bowed to the radical transgender agenda.
“Males are hurdling themselves forward in national rankings stealing scholarships, titles, and opportunities from women who have worked their whole lives for those accomplishments,” she said.
In Feb., Gaines even accused trans activists of perpetrating the “systemic eradication of women.”
“When people say this is a nonissue … that’s not true. This is so underreported that it’s mind blowing,” Gaines said. “This is happening to children and women of all ages and all sports all the way from, I mean, peewee to Masters. It’s happening in Masters golf right now, so that’s not true, but even if that were true, let’s say even one woman is displaced, it’s bigger than just being displaced. It’s the systemic eradication of women that the left is trying to achieve.”
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