All-American swimmer Riley Gaines has responded after Olympic gymnast Simone Biles took to social media to criticize her advocacy towards permitting male trans-identified athletes to compete in girls’s sports activities.
“In simply two tweets, Simone Biles mainly tarnished her popularity to anybody with a shred of honesty, to anybody with an ethical compass and, to anybody with an inherent innate want to guard girls, to struggle for equal alternative for each women and men particularly because it pertains to sports activities,” Gaines stated of the squabble in new episode of her “Gaines for Women” podcast.
Whereas Gaines acknowledged Biles’ athletic accomplishments, the previous NCAA All-American swimmer questioned why girls ought to need to make room for males in areas meant for females.
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“The conclusion I am drawing based mostly on the response now we have seen over the previous 12-ish hours at this level on social media, she’s mainly incinerated her legacy in simply two tweets,” she added.
The controversy started after the Olympic gymnastics champion known as Gaines “actually sick” in a Friday X publish for criticizing a Minnesota highschool for permitting a male athlete on a women’ softball staff.
Biles made the remark after Gaines highlighted the Champlin Park Rebels in a Friday X publish, which gained a state championship final week. Gaines famous that the Minnesota State Excessive Faculty League eliminated the power for individuals to touch upon a publish saying the staff had gained the championship, including that that is doubtless as a result of one of many gamers on the ladies’ softball staff is a male.
“You are actually sick, all of this campaigning since you misplaced a race. Straight up sore loser,” Biles wrote in response to Gaines’ publish. “You need to be uplifting the trans group and maybe discovering a option to make sports activities inclusive OR creating a brand new avenue the place trans really feel protected in sports activities. Possibly a transgender class IN ALL sports activities!!”
Biles accused Gaines of bullying trans-identifying athletes, including, “One factor [is] for positive is nobody in sports activities is protected with you round!!!!!”
In one other Friday X publish, the gymnast instructed Gaines to “[B]ully somebody your individual dimension, which might paradoxically be a male.”
In response to Biles, the ladies’s sports activities advocate stated that the Olympic gymnast’s remarks had been “so disappointing.”
“It is not my job or the job of any lady to determine how you can embody males in our areas,” Gaines said within the Olympic athlete’s replies on X. “You may uplift males stealing championships in girls’s sports activities with YOUR platform.”
“Males do not belong in girls’s sports activities, and I say that with my full chest,” she continued.
Gaines has emerged most outstanding voices advocating towards permitting males who determine as feminine to compete in girls’s sports activities. The swimmer-turned-advocate has publicly shared her story of the time she was pressured to race towards Lia (Will) Thomas through the 2022 NCAA Division I Ladies’s Swimming and Diving Championships.
Thomas competed on the boys’s swim staff on the College of Pennsylvania for 3 seasons earlier than he began swimming competitively on the ladies’s staff.
In keeping with a lawsuit Gaines and dozens of feminine athletes filed towards the NCAA final yr, the athletic affiliation pressured feminine athletes to compete towards and undress in a locker room with Thomas, whose male genitalia was nonetheless intact.
Regardless of tying with the male athlete for fifth place within the 200-yard freestyle, Gaines says an NCAA official instructed her that Thomas wanted to carry the trophy for picture functions.
On the finish of her podcast episode, Gaines invited Biles to have a dialog about girls’s sports activities on her podcast or one other platform.
Samantha Kamman is a reporter for The Christian Put up. She might be reached at: samantha.kamman@christianpost.com. Observe her on Twitter: @Samantha_Kamman
