stored on swimming<\/a>. For school, she was recruited to swim Division 1 on the University of Kentucky because the quantity two recruit out of Tennessee and quantity 98 general within the class of 2018. There, she discovered plenty of success, making a number of All-SEC groups (that\u2019s the Southeastern Conference, for the uninitiated) and racking up a good variety of SEC and NCAA accolades. She competed within the 2021 NCAA Women\u2019s Swimming & Diving Championships, putting seventh within the 200 freestyle race however profitable a silver medal within the 4 \u00d7 200-yard freestyle relay. She additionally certified for the US Olympic Trials once more in 2021 however didn’t compete.<\/p>\nIn school, her highest-ranking particular person occasion end nationally was fifth place \u2014reminder, that\u2019s off the rostrum\u2014within the NCAA WD1 Championship\u2019s 200-yard freestyle ultimate in March 2022. Despite Gaines\u2019s failure to medal, 2022 was a great yr for her each competitively and personally: She was named the 2022 SEC Women\u2019s Swimming & Diving Scholar-Athlete of the Year; she married fellow University of Kentucky swimmer Louis Barker<\/strong> after some three years of relationship; and he or she graduated with a level in well being sciences. She additionally retired from aggressive swimming, having by no means competed professionally or participated within the Olympic Games. Her unique aspiration was to attend dental college.<\/p>\nHowever, Gaines\u2019s life trajectory would quickly change after one fateful matchup on the finish of her collegiate profession. In March 2022, over the past meet of Gaines\u2019s profession, she tied with University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas<\/strong> for fifth place within the NCAA 200-yard freestyle championship. Thomas would go on to turn into the primary brazenly trans lady to win an NCAA championship, after rising victorious within the 500-yard freestyle. Thomas\u2019s win added gasoline to the hearth concerning the continued nationwide debate about trans ladies\u2019s participation in ladies\u2019s sports activities.<\/p>\nAt first, Gaines was cordial about Thomas\u2019s win and directed her ire on the NCAA. \u201cI am in full support of her and full support of her transition and her swimming career\u2026because there\u2019s no doubt that she works hard too, but she\u2019s just abiding by the rules that the NCAA put in place, and that\u2019s the issue,\u201d she reportedly mentioned in an interview with The Daily Wire.<\/em> But finally, Gaines did what many in her place have, pivoting to hawking right-wing conservative speaking factors and anti-trans rhetoric as her full-time job.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n[ad_2]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[ad_1] Over the weekend, Olympian Simone Biles discovered herself in an uncommon competitors, dealing with off in opposition to former school athlete turned conservative political activist Riley Gaines in a disagreement. The two discovered themselves in a heated debate on X about trans athletes in ladies\u2019s sports activities, an argument that took the web by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":145260,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[11687,1687,9052,9217,3944,5382,1686,10305],"class_list":{"0":"post-145258","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrity-gossip","8":"tag-activist","9":"tag-biles","10":"tag-conservative","11":"tag-gaines","12":"tag-political","13":"tag-riley","14":"tag-simone","15":"tag-task"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}