Riley Gaines

I thought a coach would.

would say something.

I thought some other swimmer.

I thought someone with political power, someone within the NCAA.

Quite honestly, I thought someone's dad would come down there and yank this man out of our locker rooms.

But it was in that moment...

where we were standing on the podium, myself included.

I'm standing on the podium and we're clapping and we're smiling and we're cheering.

And it hit me.

I'm like, what in the world are we clapping for?

Because, I mean, really what we're applauding is our own erasure, our own demolition.

And so it was right then and there that, again, like a slap across the face, I was like,

How in the world can we as women, as female athletes, expect someone to stand up for us if we aren't even willing to stand up for us?

Like, this has to come from us.

So, again, I knew all season the unfair competition was wrong.

I knew all season that the locker room aspect was wrong.

I knew that the silencing that we were facing from our universities, I knew all of that was wrong.

We all did.

But it wasn't until this official reduced everything that we had worked our entire lives for down to a photo op to validate the feelings and the identity of a man at the expense of our own.

That's really when I decided that I couldn't continue being silent.