Riley Gaines Is For Girls Who Know The Difference Between Fair And Fake

Riley Gaines doesn't seem like a culture warrior. She has sun-streaked blonde hair, a gorgeous, friendly face, and even when Simone Biles came out swinging on X, she carried herself with poise rather than provocation.

But Riley found herself in the middle of a culture war when it became clear that everyone else was too afraid to speak up. And that’s where her real race began.

Gaines for Girls

When Riley launched her show with OutKick, the title proved to be a clever play on her name and the ultimate mission statement. “I love the name because it says exactly what we’re about,” she explains. “It’s a show for women. For girls. We’re not afraid to say that word.”

And like many parts of Riley's journey over the last three years, what began as a response to a personal injustice has now taken on a much deeper meaning, especially since Riley learned she's expecting a daughter.

“Knowing it’s a girl has made everything feel more urgent,” she adds. “It’s not just about policy or politics anymore. I’m fighting for her future.”

And, in her words, that future should be one where a woman doesn’t have to apologize for being one.

Back to the Beginning

Not that long ago, Gaines was laser-focused on swimming. And not just in the college athlete kind of way, but in the everyday-before-sunrise, never-saw-prom-or-Christmas-or-a-family-vacation kind of way. She didn’t dabble in sports. She lived for them.

“I started swimming when I was four,” she explains. "I come from a family of athletes. My dad played in the NFL—he was at Vanderbilt, actually, and he’s an SEC Hall of Famer. My mom played Division I softball. My oldest sister went on to play softball at Ole Miss. My brother plays college football. My youngest sister is 16 and a gymnast, and unless God has other plans, she’s absolutely going to compete at the collegiate level too. So yeah, athletics are a big part of my background. and really, my family’s identity. It’s in our DNA.”

For years, swimming wasn’t just a sport. It was her mission. “We trained over six hours a day, ten-plus miles in the pool. Three of those hours were before 8 a.m. And you did it again the next day. No summers, no holidays. Just the water and the work.”

The sacrifices were endless. “No prom. No vacations. No Friday night sleepovers because you had Saturday morning practice.” I ask about the toll all that chlorine must’ve taken on her famously golden hair.

She laughs, then describes the kind of breakage only swimmers understand. Brittle, green-tinged, constantly in recovery mode. The grind was far from glamourous, but she was determined to be the best.

By the time she reached the University of Kentucky, Gaines had become one of the fastest swimmers in America. Twelve-time NCAA All-American. Five-time SEC Champion. SEC record holder in the 200 butterfly. Two-time Olympic Trials qualifier. Scholar Athlete of the Year. The kind of stats that would, in any other time, cement her legacy as one of the greats. Remember that next time one of her detractors tells you she's "just a swimmer who lost."

2022 was supposed to be another year of records and medals, but instead it marked the beginning of a national controversy, and a turning point that would make Riley Gaines one of the most talked-about athletes in America.

The NCAA's Betrayal

In the lead-up to the NCAA Women’s Swimming Championships, Gaines was ranked third in the nation in her event. She was chasing a national title in what should have been the pinnacle of her collegiate career. But then out of nowhere, a new name appeared at the top of the rankings. A name no one recognized. It was Lia Thomas.

“None of us had heard of this swimmer,” she explains. “Not me, not my teammates, not our coaches.” Thomas was leading by body lengths in multiple events, everything from sprints to long-distance swims. Which, Gaines explains, is unheard of. “Usually a swimmer specializes. You don’t dominate every event like that unless something’s off.”

It wasn’t until an article was published that the pieces clicked into place. Lia Thomas, formerly Will Thomas, had previously competed on the University of Pennsylvania’s men’s team, ranking in the 400s and 500s, before switching to the women’s team and suddenly becoming a top national competitor.

“I thought there must be a policy that would prevent this,” Gaines answered when I asked what her initial response was to the revelation that Lia was male. “But there wasn’t. Three weeks before nationals, the NCAA said Thomas’s participation in the women’s category was ‘non-negotiable.’ We were told to accept it with a smile.”

In the lead-up to the meet, outside “professionals” were brought in to lecture the swimmers on “restorative justice.” Riley and her teammates were told they were the oppressors, that Thomas was the real victim. They were warned that if they spoke out, someone might hurt themselves, and it would be their fault. “They told us we would be murderers,” she says plainly.

The pressure to stay silent was overwhelming. Riley sensed everyone knew it was wrong, from coaches, athletic directors, even the NCAA, but no one dared say it out loud. “We all recognized how unfair it was,” she admits. “But people were terrified. Understandably.”

Still, the meet went on. And then, Riley raced him.

“It was the 200 freestyle. We both qualified for the championship final. I remember standing on the block, looking over, and seeing someone who was clearly a man. Six foot four, size 15 feet, taking up the entire diving platform.” She reflects on that moment now with a kind of bittersweet clarity. “We all knew it was wrong. Every swimmer. Every coach. The NCAA. But no one would say it out loud. Everyone was terrified.”

The Tie That Rocked The World

"We went the exact same time, down to the hundredth of a second," she explains. That never happens in swimming.” In another interview, she’s described it as nothing short of divine providence. A moment so precise, so statistically rare, it felt like God Himself was drawing a line in the sand. But it wasn’t the just tie that pushed Gaines over the edge. It was the moment she stood behind an awards podium and watched a six-foot-four male swimmer take the trophy meant for her.

“They only had one trophy,” she says flatly. “And they handed it to Lia Thomas.” The moment could have passed like any other disappointing day in a competitive athlete’s career, except it didn’t. Because when Gaines asked an NCAA official why the trophy was being given to Thomas, she got the kind of answer you never forget.

“He looked sad. Like he didn’t even believe what he was about to say. But he told me, ‘Riley, I’m sorry. We’ve been advised that when photos are being taken, the trophy must be in Lia’s hands.’” He added that Riley could pose with it, but she had to give it back. “That’s when I knew it was never about competition," she explains. "It was about a photo op. About validating someone’s identity at the expense of every woman on that podium.”

Obviously, it wasn’t the trophy that mattered. She has a dozen at home. “It was the principle. They weren’t just asking us to compete against men, they were asking us to smile while we did it. To clap, to cheer, to go along with the lie.” And she couldn’t. That's when Gaines started asking questions, pushing up the chain of command, all the way to then-NCAA president Mark Emmert. The bizarre irony? He encouraged her. “He told me, ‘Keep fighting.’ And I told him, ‘What? You’re the one I’m fighting.’”

His response? “Our hands are tied. We can’t get sued.”

Her response? “Then I’ll sue you.” And she did.

Now, Gaines is one of over 19 plaintiffs across three lawsuits aimed at holding the NCAA accountable. The suits include institutions like Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Mountain West Conference. But the real target is broader: “We are governed by weak-kneed, morally bankrupt, spineless cowards. People who know the right thing and still refuse to do it if it costs them something.”

Inside the Locker Room

“At first, you’re just trying to get out of the room,” she tells me, recalling the moment she turned around mid–suit change and came face-to-face with Thomas in the women’s locker room. “But once you have a little distance from it, and especially now that I’m pregnant, carrying a little girl...I just can’t imagine her in that position. Or my little sister. It’s sickening.”

What happened wasn’t just emotional manipulation, she says. It was sexual abuse. “We were 17, 18, 19 years old. Vulnerable. Undressed. There were no warnings, no separate stalls. And suddenly there’s a man right next to you, fully intact, fully exposed.”

And if you think that language is harsh, she has a response for you. “Anyone who attempts to normalize that or silence women who object to it is a sexual predator,” she says simply. “Call it what it is.”

Gaines is clearly done with being told that her concern for women’s safety is “hate.” She’s done with the gaslighting, the guilt-tripping, the “restorative justice circles” where young women are made to feel like monsters for recognizing their own vulnerabilities when men enter their private spaces.

“They brought in outside professionals to tell us we were oppressors. That we were like the KKK for not wanting to compete against a male athlete." It was, she realizes now, coordinated emotional abuse. “They blackmailed us with guilt. With fear. They convinced so many girls to stay silent because they were terrified of losing scholarships, friends, jobs. I just reached a point where I didn’t care anymore.”

“This movement, this ideology, it doesn’t just affect sports,” she adds. “It affects locker rooms. Prisons. Bathrooms. Safety. Dignity. Truth."

That realization has only grown sharper with time. She now sees the transgender movement’s reach extending into parental rights, child safeguarding, even basic biology. “We’ve regressed as a society if we can’t emphatically say men can’t become women. That men can’t get pregnant. That’s not progress.”

“Eventually I realized, if someone doesn’t want to be my friend because I have the most common-sense opinion in the world, that men shouldn’t compete against women, maybe they were never my friend. And if a job wouldn’t hire me for saying that, is that even a job I’d want?”

Going Public

Still, she didn’t quite know how to take a stand. How do you push back against something so massive, so coordinated, so culturally armored? The answer, for Riley, was telling the truth.

And it started with a message from a Daily Wire journalist, Mary Margaret Olohan. “I told her everything. The locker room, the trophy, the threats, all of it.” The story blew up.

From there, it was a whirlwind. Fox News appearances (including a nervous but endearing “you know”-filled debut with Tucker Carlson), countless interviews, and a growing presence as the face of a movement. But while she was preaching to the choir, she wanted to reach the people who didn’t already agree with her, so she reached out to CNN, to MSNBC, and other left-leaning local outlets.

“They either ignored me or said they wouldn’t give me a platform to spread ‘hate.’ And that was hard," she admits. "Because I wasn’t spewing hate. I was just trying to explain, respectfully, what we had lived through.”

That rejection became another defining moment. “There’s no convincing everyone,” she concedes. “But there’s a huge group of people in the middle who can be persuaded. That’s who I’m trying to reach.”

“Three years ago, I didn’t imagine it would fall entirely along party lines," she adds. "I thought, this is so obviously unfair, surely people will see that. But it turns out common sense has become a partisan issue.”

Still, she's hopeful. The tide, she believes, is really beginning to turn. And the Simone Biles incident proves it.

Simone Biles Picks the Wrong Fight

“It’s crazy how that all started,” Gaines says, referring to a Friday night tweet she posted about a high school softball championship in Minnesota. A male athlete identifying as a girl had joined the girls’ team and led them to a state title. Thirty-five innings pitched. Only two runs allowed. A championship won. And the stands? Packed with people who said nothing.

“I kept thinking about the parents in the bleachers, the girls on that team. They were just supposed to sit there and smile? Pretend this wasn’t happening?”

Naturally, Gaines called it out on X. And Simone Biles, Olympic darling and gymnastics legend, lashed out. In a now-infamous tweet, the Olympic gymnast called Gaines a “sore loser” and “bully,” accusing her of making sports unsafe. She capped it off with a jab that backfired spectacularly: “Bully someone your own size, which would ironically be a male."

The true irony wasn’t lost on Riley. “I’m five foot five," she says with a laught. "Pre-pregnancy I weighed about 130 pounds. Totally average for an athletic woman. Simone, of all people, should understand body types in sports. I always respected her. I thought she was strong and fierce and proud of her body. That’s why her comments were so disappointing.”

It was also a rhetorical checkmate in Riley's favor. In trying to insult Riley’s appearance, Biles inadvertently undercut the very ideology she was defending. After all, if sex doesn’t matter in sports, if male and female bodies are supposedly interchangeable, then why suggest Riley’s physique is “man-sized”? The insult only made sense if Biles herself recognized that some biological differences do matter, especially in athletics.

“I told my husband, ‘Here we go. It’s going to be a weekend of hate in my inbox,’” Gaines recalls, with a weary smile. “But that’s not what happened. Not even close.”

The Ultimate Reversal

Instead, the vitriol reversed course and landed squarely on Biles herself. “It was the ultimate Uno reverse card," Riley says.

Within minutes, mothers of daughters, teen athletes, and everyday women flooded Biles’ comment sections with disappointment and disbelief. Not trolls. Fans. Girls who had looked up to Simone for years. Women who had cheered for her and defended her. The response was so overwhelming, Biles shut off her comments. By Monday, she issued an apology. Kind of.

“It was half-hearted,” Gaines admits. “But I accepted it. I’m willing to move on.”

But it didn’t smooth things over, not even with her own side. Progressives were quick to pile on after that, accusing Biles of “capitulating to bigots” and “platforming transphobia” by walking back her comments. What began as a cheap shot at Riley ended with Biles caught in a cultural no-man’s land, scorned by the right and abandoned by the left. Days later, after facing widespread backlash, she deactivated her entire X account, which had nearly two million followers.

“It’s not 2020 anymore,” Riley says. “More and more people are bold enough to say, ‘Men can’t be women.’”

Three years ago, Riley believes that never would have happened. The pressure would have been on her to apologize, not the other way around. The culture of silence is cracking. The cost of truth-telling is slowly being outweighed by the hunger for it.

“Now it’s Simone feeling the pressure to explain herself," Riley adds. "That tells me things are changing."

And part of that, she believes, is because of what happened on November 5th, an electoral shift. “People have had enough. They’re drawing a line in the sand.” And for the recond, she doesn't think Simone Biles is evil, just misled. “She’s done competing. She doesn’t have daughters yet. It’s easy to say the virtuous thing when it doesn’t cost you anything. But for the rest of us? It costs something.”

“I was told I’d lose everything if I spoke out. I haven’t lost a single friend. Not one job opportunity. None of it came true.” But she understands the bubble, the elite echo chamber Biles lives in. “When you’re constantly surrounded by people who tell you what the ‘respectful’ thing is, you start to believe it. You start to believe you’re the villain for wanting fairness.”

Reaching Across the Aisle

I asked what Riley would say to someone who disagrees with her position. Someone well-meaning, but bought into the narrative?

“I’d start with the locker room,” she says. “Not even the sports. Not the scholarships. Just that moment when a young girl is completely undressed and turns around to see a naked man next to her. That’s all it takes.” She continues, “This isn’t really about trans people. I rarely even talk about them directly. This is about women. About how we’re being erased, sidelined, betrayed. About how we’re expected to smile while it happens.”

She talks about the young women she knows who are sexual assault survivors, forced to change in janitor closets to avoid sharing a locker room with a biological male. “We’re calling that progress?” The conversation widens. Prisons. Shelters. Sororities. “In California, 1,500 male inmates applied to transfer into women’s prisons. You know how many women applied to go into men’s prisons? One. And she had three months left on her sentence.”

And yet Gaines is the one painted as extreme. “They say I want to inspect kids’ genitals. That I’m dangerous. But I think if anyone actually sat across from me and had a rational conversation, we’d agree on a lot more than we think."

Missiom and Motherhood

For Riley, this new chapter, both professional and maternal, is deeply spiritual. “I’ve always been pro-life because I’m a Christian,” she says, “but now, watching her do somersaults in my belly, feeling her kick, seeing her little hands and feet...I’m radically pro-life. It’s not theoretical anymore. It’s real.”

She speaks with reverence about Jeremiah 1:5, Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and reflects on the God who “doesn’t make mistakes.” To her, the gender ideology movement’s core lie is that our Creator got it wrong. And that, she says, is the real battle.

“If I had a magic wand,” she says when I ask her what she’d change about the culture, “I’d bring us back to biblical principles. Those truths are the foundation of a sane, moral society.”

I ask how her mission has evolved since that fateful swim meet back in 2022.

“I think it’s evolved every day,” she answers. “I started out trying to right a wrong. But once the veil lifts, once you see it, you can’t unsee it.” Now, her advocacy touches everything: parental rights, women’s prisons, child safeguarding, the war on biological truth.

And she knows she’s not alone anymore. What once felt like a lonely hill to die on has become a rallying cry. After the clash with Biles, Gaines’ follower count skyrocketed. The "uno reverse" hit harder than she ever imagined.

Wisdom Made Simple

As we start to wrap up, I tell Riley a story from earlier that morning when I’d explained to my kids, ages 7, 5, and 3, that I was about to interview a woman who had spoken out when a male athlete was allowed to compete in women’s swimming. I told them that the woman had the courage to say what so many others wouldn’t: that it wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t right.

They all leaned in, fully engrossed, until my three-year-old son blurted out a verdict only a child could deliver with such simple clarity: “She was telling the truth!”

When I recount this to Riley, her face lights up. “See, even three-year-olds get this,” she says with a grin. “It’s instinctual. It’s primal. And yet somehow, we have Supreme Court justices who can’t define what a woman is.”

A child instinctively recognizing the truth that so many adults pretend not to see, felt like a perfect reflection of everything Riley is fighting for. Through her lawsuits, Gaines for Girls, and her growing influence in the public square, she’s building a cultural memory that refuses to forget what a woman is, and a reminder that courage is the highest form of compassion.

She knows the world she wants her daughter to inherit won’t come from silence or wishful thinking. It will come from women who are willing to speak up for the girls.