Riley Gaines

That's why I say I felt relieved because I thought that the NCAA would see this how I saw it and how, again, my teammates saw it, how my coaches saw it, how my family saw it, how anyone with any amount of brain activity would probably comprehend this.

Look, nothing hateful about it, nothing even opinionated about it.

The sheer facts on the paper in front of us that this was not a lateral movement by any means.

But lo and behold, the NCAA did not see it that way.

They saw absolutely nothing wrong with this.

And so about three weeks before our national championships in March of 2022, they released a statement saying that Thomas's participation in the women's category was a non-negotiable.

Basically saying that, look, there was nothing that we could do as female athletes.

There was no questions that we could ask or concerns that we could raise about

We were told that we had to accept this with a smile on our face.

So that's kind of the lead up to that national championships and really how myself and my teammates and really the nation.

The world actually found out about Leah Thomas.

And I will say I had heard of this happening in sports before, but I'd really only heard of it going the other way.

Right.

So women, females who wanted to self-identify as men, then going to compete in the men's category.

Which, look, I don't I didn't ever agree with.

I never necessarily supported it.

But maybe at the time I didn't see a problem with it.

Right.

Because no one's, I guess, competition, the men's competition isn't being threatened.

So, you know, I thought it was dumb on the woman's behalf, but whatever.