Pablo Torre

And if Title IX doesn't protect trans people from discrimination in education that has, like, implications for bathrooms, it has implications for school clubs, all sorts of issues around trans kids being able to go to school as themselves.

And so now we're just seeing the logic and the incentive structure become clear, which is to say that when it comes to why Riley Gaines might have been telling this story in this way, changing it over time, apparently exaggerating the story of how Leah Thomas, inside that fateful bathroom-slash-locker room, had exposed her to male genitalia, allegedly, which she then went on to equate to, quote, some form of sexual assault.

The reason that all of that matters, the fact-checking of that, is because it provides the framework for keeping trans people out of not just sports, but pretty much every space in American life.

There's a whole other lawsuit that we haven't talked about yet.

At this point, I feel like I'm the person that needs to go for a swim.

So we've now traced the arc from Riley Gaines growing up, being recruited by Coach Lars, to making it to the University of Kentucky, to then feeding into the right-wing outrage machine that has completely dominated the American political moment.

And there is something else that we haven't even gotten to yet that is relevant to every part of the story.

So Riley's lawsuit and the other lawsuits over trans athletes, those make a lot of headlines.

But there's another case that we haven't talked about.

And this brings us back to coach Lars Jorgensen.

He was the one who, according to Riley's teammates, imposed punishment swims, ran them ragged.

The thing is, it's not just them who have raised these kinds of complaints about Lars Jorgensen.

In 2023, the year after Riley graduated, other swimmers at the University of Kentucky started complaining about Jorgensen to the athletic department, and they opened an investigation into whether Coach Lars was complying with NCAA rules.

So I got records from that investigation from the university.

through a public records request, 29 swimmers and seven coaches were interviewed, plus alumni wrote in.

And they back up pretty much everything that my sources said about Jorgensen, from the punishment swims to the eating disorders.

When I reached out to the University of Kentucky for comment, they told me that Jorgensen was removed from the pool deck on May 1st of 2023 in the midst of this investigation.

He was prohibited from interacting with student athletes and coaches.

Okay.

And so Coach Lars, who again, was one of Riley's best friends, even post-graduation, was she involved in any of this?