Riley Gaines

Riley Marie Gaines (born April 2000), also known as Riley Gaines Barker, is an American former competitive swimmer from Gallatin, Tennessee, who competed for the University of Kentucky NCAA swim team. She was the 2022 Southeastern Conference Women's Swimming and Diving Scholar-Athlete of the Year. Gaines has campaigned against the participation of trans women in women's sports.

Gaines' parents were also active in sports. Her father, Brad Gaines, played football at Vanderbilt University and her mother, Telisha Gaines, played softball at Donelson Christian Academy and Austin Peay. Gaines attended Station Camp High School in Gallatin, Tennessee.As a junior, she won the 100-meter butterfly and 100-meter freestyle in the TISCA High School Swim & Dive Championship in Knoxville in 2017. Gaines is a Christian.

Gaines joined the University of Kentucky's swim team and made the All-SEC Freshman Team in 2019. She also made the All-SEC Second Team in 2019 and 2020. She participated in the 2021 NCAA Women's Swimming & Diving Championships, coming second in the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay and seventh in the 200m freestyle race; she made the All-SEC First Team that year.

In 2022, while swimming for the University of Kentucky in the 200-yard NCAA freestyle championship, Gaines tied for fifth place with University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, who became the first openly trans woman champion in the NCAA women's division after winning the 500-yard freestyle.

Gaines has advocated against the inclusion of trans women in the women's division of sports, including by lobbying her state representatives in April 2022 to pass a law that would prohibit transgender women from women's sports.

In September 2022, Gaines supported the campaign of US Senator Rand Paul by appearing in a TV ad for him, where she shared her criticism of trans women in women's sports.

By January 2023, Gaines had participated in a small protest at the NCAA Convention, appeared in campaign advertisements for former US Senate candidate Herschel Walker, and spoken at a Donald Trump rally.

In March 2023, Gaines was an invited speaker at a Texas Senate committee in support of legislation that would categorically prohibit transgender college athletes from competing in sports divisions that align with their gender identity.

In April 2023, Gaines visited San Francisco State University for a Turning Point USA student chapter event and spoke publicly about her campaign against transgender athletes in women's sports. After the event concluded, protesters arrived. Gaines was escorted by law enforcement officers to shelter in a classroom, where she stayed for three hours while protesters continued to demonstrate outside. After the event, Gaines said she had been physically struck twice by a person during the protest.PEN America called the incident a "disaster," adding that "Physical intimidation or violence is never an acceptable response to speech, no matter how hateful or controversial that speech may be."

After the SFSU event, SFGATE wrote that Gaines "rose to prominence as an activist last year after tying for fifth place with trans swimmer Lia Thomas," and "has since gone on a public crusade against Thomas."On June 2, 2023, Gaines endorsed Ron DeSantis in the 2024 US presidential election.

On June 21, 2023, Gaines appeared as a witness at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing focused on safeguarding civil rights for LGBTQ Americans and according to C-SPAN, shared her "own personal experience competing with trans swimmer Lia Thomas and having to share the same dressing room."

In August 2023, Gaines and other members of the anti-trans group Independent Women's Voice accompanied Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt as he signed an executive order developed from model legislation created by IWV, after similar legislation twice failed to pass in the Oklahoma legislature. The executive order includes a variety of provisions, including a prohibition on transgender women and girls using bathrooms and locker rooms designated for "women," a direction to state agencies to use sex assigned at birth to define male and female, as well as definitions for terms such as "man" and "woman."

In November 2023, Gaines confirmed working with FIDE to prevent transgender women from playing in women's chess. This prompted criticism from PinkNews for claiming that trans women had an advantage at chess.

In December, a picture of Gaines in a bikini, stretched out next to a swimming pool, appeared as the cover image of "Conservative Dad's Real Women of America 2024 Calendar", put out by Ultra Right Beer, created earlier in the year in response to a conservative boycott of Bud Light after it hired influencer Dylan Mulvaney as a spokesperson; two similar pictures of Gaines were inside along with photos of other young conservative activists and commentators, some also minimally attired. The calendar was later the subject of an online debate among conservatives. It was vociferously criticized by social conservatives and evangelicals for demeaning the women who posed for it and acceding to the values of what they see as a fallen, overly sexualized culture, and defended by "Barstool conservatives" who considered that criticism censorious and puritanical.