Riley Gaines intended to pursue a career as a dentist after graduating, but she is now consumed by the quest for fairness for women in sport
Eight months after she raced against Lia Thomas, the transgender swimmer who ignited a global firestorm by winning a national female collegiate title in the United States, Riley Gaines still feels a searing sense of injustice.
“It felt,” she says, “like heartbreak. Women had dedicated their entire lives to this. We had spent 5½ hours every day in the pool. To have it taken away from you by somebody who, only a year earlier, would never have even qualified for this competition as a man? It was a total slap in the face.”
But the indignities she felt were only just beginning. The day after she watched Thomas – who until starting hormone therapy was ranked a mere 554th as a man – vanquish every female rival in the country, she found that they would be direct competitors in the 200-yard freestyle final. They finished, ultimately, in a dead heat for fifth.
Except, only Thomas was allowed to hold the fifth-place trophy, with Gaines told by an official that it was “for photo purposes”. She would need, she was told, to make do with the award for sixth.