In the latest chapter of an ongoing debate about transgender athletes in women’s sports, former collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines has responded to Olympic champion Simone Biles with a video aimed at countering Biles’ recent criticism.
The controversy began when Gaines, a vocal advocate against transgender women competing in female sports categories, commented on social media about a high school softball championship. Referring to transgender pitcher Marissa Rothenberger, who helped her team win the state title, Gaines wrote: “To be expected when your star player is a boy.”
Biles, who has won seven Olympic gold medals, responded sharply to Gaines’ remarks, calling her “truly sick” and a “straight up sore loser,” referencing Gaines’ tie with transgender swimmer Lia Thomas for fifth place in the 2022 NCAA Championships.
In a particularly pointed comment, Biles suggested Gaines should “bully someone your own size, which would ironically be a male.”
Gaines, who has been campaigning for policies restricting transgender women from female sports categories, responded with a video featuring herself standing back-to-back with her husband while measuring her height.
“Simone Biles yesterday told me to bully someone my own size and then said, ironically, that would be a man,” Gaines states in the video. “Number one, acknowledging that there are differences between men and women.”
The video shows Gaines measuring herself at 5’5.5″, contradicting both Wikipedia’s listing of her height as 5’9″ and responding to what she perceived as “body-shaming” from Biles.
In her original response to Biles, Gaines wrote: “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… Men don’t belong in women’s sports and I say that with my full chest.”
Biles had suggested that Gaines 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!!”
The exchange highlights the continuing tensions around transgender participation in sports, a debate that intensified in February when Gaines attended the White House as President Donald Trump signed an executive order excluding transgender girls and women from competing in women’s sports.
Transgender advocate and former Harvard swimmer Schuyler Bailar called that order “absolutely devastating” and “discriminatory,” adding: “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.”
But there are plenty of high level personalities who stand behind the ban including many politicians and athletes.
