{"id":1595,"date":"2025-02-27T08:04:08","date_gmt":"2025-02-27T08:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amazing.greensmartmobility.com\/?p=1595"},"modified":"2025-02-27T08:04:09","modified_gmt":"2025-02-27T08:04:09","slug":"former-ncaa-swimmer-riley-gaines-talks-transgender-athletes-in-collegiate-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amazing.greensmartmobility.com\/?p=1595","title":{"rendered":"Former NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines talks transgender athletes in collegiate sports"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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In March 2022, Riley Gaines \u2014 a 12-time NCAA swimmer from the University of Kentucky \u2014 lost the 200-meter freestyle race by a hundredth of a second to Lia Thomas, a transgender athlete from the University of Pennsylvania. Wednesday evening, Gaines visited Baylor to speak to students about how allowing transgender athletes to compete in collegiate sports goes against what\u00a0Title IX\u00a0vows to protect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhile Title IX\u2019s benefits are undeniable for female athletes, the Biden administration is now working on preventing the discrimination of not sex but how one self-identifies,\u201d Gaines said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gaines said legislation is needed in Congress to advocate for women\u2019s rights. One such example is the Women\u2019s Bill of Rights, which aims to \u201cclarify our common understanding of basic sex-based words.\u201d So far, Gaines said, it has been passed in four states: Tennessee, Kansas, Oklahoma and Nebraska.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThis specific piece of legislation mirrors the 23 other states in our country who have passed fairness in sports bills over the past few years, which is a major improvement from two years ago, when fairness in sports was only passed in Idaho,\u201d Gaines said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gaines said she prefers legislation like this as opposed to what she refers to as \u201csilly\u201d days and months of visibility, such as Women\u2019s History Month. Gaines said those times honored men who claimed the identity of women rather than biological women themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was not fair that Will Thomas \u2014 or Lia, whatever Thomas self-identifies as now \u2014 got a whole segment during Women\u2019s History Month in March on ESPN, when there are other talented collegiate female swimmers to be interviewed,\u201d Gaines said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boulder, Colo., freshman Rebecca Stoll was among those in attendance at the speech in the Paul L. Foster Success Center. Stoll said she fully supports Gaines\u2019 opposition to transgender athletes and her fight to support biological women in sports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThere are only two different genders, and it is not fair to the women like Riley, who spend their lives competing at her high level, only to be beaten by a man,\u201d Stoll said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Houston junior Hannah Martin, who also attended the speech, said it is important to speak out about rising gender issues in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRiley\u2019s firsthand experience \u2014 by racing Lia Thomas and losing by such a narrow margin \u2014 shows that the current system is not fair for all competitors, especially for women,\u201d Martin said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for the status of the topic in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law in June requiring collegiate athletes to compete based on their biological sex, expanding upon the 2021 law that required students in grades K-12 to do the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In March 2022, Riley Gaines \u2014 a 12-time NCAA swimmer from the University of Kentucky \u2014 lost the 200-meter freestyle race by a hundredth of […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1597,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amazing.greensmartmobility.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amazing.greensmartmobility.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amazing.greensmartmobility.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amazing.greensmartmobility.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amazing.greensmartmobility.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1595"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/amazing.greensmartmobility.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1599,"href":"https:\/\/amazing.greensmartmobility.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1595\/revisions\/1599"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amazing.greensmartmobility.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amazing.greensmartmobility.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amazing.greensmartmobility.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amazing.greensmartmobility.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}