Olympic champion Simone Biles eviscerated former college swimmer Riley Gaines over her “sick” online comments about a transgender female softball player.
Gaines, a vocal Donald Trump supporter who is known for campaigning against trans athletes in women’s sports, had mocked the Minnesota State High School League for removing comments on their post about the Chaplin Park girls’ team celebrating the State Championship.
“To be expected when your star player is a boy,” Gaines wrote on X of 17-year-old pitcher Marissa Rothenberger, who threw a complete-game shutout, allowing just three hits and striking out six to secure the title.
Seven-time Olympic gold medalist Biles responded to Gaines’s tweet on Friday, writing: “You’re truly sick, all of this campaigning because you lost a race.”
Gaines tied for fifth place with transgender woman Lia Thomas in the 200m freestyle swimming at the 2022 NCAA Championships.
“Straight up sore loser,” Biles continued. “You should be uplifting the trans community and perhaps finding a way to make sports inclusive OR creating a new avenue where trans feel safe in sports. Maybe a transgender category IN ALL sports!! But instead… You bully them… One things for sure is no one in sports is safe with you around!!!!!”
“Bully someone your own size, which would ironically be a male,” Biles added in a separate post.
Gaines quickly shot back, writing: “This is actually so disappointing. It’s not my job or the job of any woman to figure out how to include men in our spaces. You can uplift men stealing championships in women’s sports with YOUR platform. Men don’t belong in women’s sports and I say that with my full chest.”
Responding to Biles’s jab about her size, she added: “And the subtle hint at ‘body-shaming’ ???? Plzzzz I’m 5’5.”
Gaines has been actively campaigning for policies that restrict transgender women from competing in female sports categories since tying with Thomas in 2022.
That year, World Aquatics implemented a policy barring transgender women from participating in women’s elite races if they had undergone any stage of male puberty.
Thomas later pursued a legal challenge to overturn the regulations but was unsuccessful.
This February, Gaines was present at the White House when U.S. President Trump signed an executive order excluding transgender girls and women from competing in women’s sports.
Former Harvard University swimmer Schuyler Bailar, who made history in 2015 as the first openly transgender athlete to compete on an NCAA Division I men’s team, called the order “absolutely devastating” and “discriminatory.”
“This, I think, is a really horrible way to invite a lot of discrimination — not just against trans people — but also against all people in the women’s category, because this is a policing of women’s bodies in sports.” said Bailar.