Riley Gaines

University of Kentucky won its first ever program title in school history.

And ultimately, I concluded my junior year placing seventh in the country, which I was proud of, right?

You're top eight.

You're an All-American.

It's a pretty high honor.

But I knew right then and there that I placed seventh in the nation my junior year, that my senior year I had a goal of winning a national title.

So that's kind of the backstory to now kind of finding out about all of this other stuff going on.

Senior year rolls around.

About midway through my senior year, I'm right on pace to achieve my goal.

I'm ranked third in the nation behind one amazing female swimmer who I knew very well because, you know, like in most sports, your top-tier athletes know of each other regardless of where you compete because you've grown up competing against each other.

So I knew this girl very well, trailing her by a few one-hundredths, tenths of a second maybe.

But the swimmer who was leading the nation by body lengths, might I add, which is a very large margin in swimming, right?

A sport that's measured down to the hundredth of a second.

This swimmer was leading the country by multiple seconds.

Was a swimmer that I had never heard of before.

And this is the first time that me and my teammates became aware of a swimmer named Leah Thomas.

For all we knew at the time,

Right.

Keep in mind, we hadn't seen a picture of this person or else things would have been a little more clear.

For all we knew at the time, this was a senior from University of Pennsylvania, which is not a school that historically produces fast swimmers.