A swimmer who competed against Lia Thomas at the NCAA swimming championships ripped the organization in a Tuesday interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
“I feel like to have that kind of forced upon us, so not only were we forced to race against a male, we were forced to change in the locker room with one, and so, it’s just this feeling of like, what is happening?” Riley Gaines, who competed for the University of Kentucky, told Carlson. (RELATED: ‘One Spot Taken Away’: Swimmer Slams NCAA Rules Allowing Lia Thomas To Compete Against Biological Women)
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Thomas’s participation in the NCAA championships, where the biological male won the 500-yard women’s final, drew widespread criticism. Sixteen of Thomas’s teammates wrote the NCAA anonymously in February, urging that Thomas be barred from competing.
Gaines described an “edgy” atmosphere at the event.
“Obviously I know how I felt and I knew how my teammates felt, but no one really wanted to talk about it,” Gaines said. “And so, this was on day one, and then that night we watched Lia Thomas win a national title and blow all the other females completely out of the water. And that next day we came back and the mood had shifted to where people were mad, the girls, you know, there were tears.”
Gaines also described discomfort in the locker room.
“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,” she said.
The NCAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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