Who is Riley Gaines? Swimmer reveals 'extreme discomfort' at being exposed to Lia Thomas's 'different parts' in locker room

Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines, who earlier slammed the University of Pennsylvania’s decision to nominate transgender swimmer Lia Thomas for the NCAA’s Woman of the Year award, has now shown “extreme discomfort” sharing a locker room with Thomas.

On the latest episode of Fox Nation's ‘Tucker Carlson Today," Gaines accused organizers of not disclosing that the 23-year-old Thomas would be using the women’s locker rooms. Gaines said, “That's not something we were forewarned about, which I don't think is right in any means, changing in a locker room with someone who has different parts. I feel like to have that kind of forced upon us, so not only were we forced to race against a male, we were forced to change in the locker room with one. And so then we're sitting there not even knowing who to talk to, who to complain to, because this kind of all happened behind the scenes and very discreetly." As reported by Fox News, Gaines, who was also nominated for NCAA Woman of the Year by the University of Kentucky, called out the "huge lack of accountability" between the NCAA and policymaking sides for not protecting the integrity of women’s sports.

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She said, "I think people forget that women's sports were a protected group. The category was made because the playing field was not level by any means when you have them competing against men," Gaines said. "And so obviously it was created to ensure that fairness. And now that we are kind of completely flipping that, it devalues what it was created for."

'Are you all okay with this?'

Gaines went on to say, "Once you start infringing upon something that people have fought so hard to get and something that I know, personally, I have dedicated essentially my whole life to, I'm allowed to think that's not okay and obviously not support that by any means." Talking further on personal beliefs, Gaines, who has won three individual conference titles in the SEC, said she is not scared to speak out. "I talked to my athletic director, I talked to my parents, and I was like, 'Are you all okay with this?' And they all said, speak your heart, go for it," she said. "It's just been an influx of support all across the board, honestly. You have your couple of negative comments, but it's things calling me, like, transphobic – which, if they say that, it just rolls right over my head because they're not listening to the message."

'Lia still has male body parts'

Earlier, in March, a complaint against the University of Pennsylvania was filed by the conservative group Concerned Women for America by Thomas’ teammates. Among them, one told DailyMail that sharing a locker room with Thomas is “definitely awkward because Lia still has male body parts and is attracted to women.” She further said, "Multiple swimmers have raised it, multiple different times. But we were basically told that we could not ostracize Lia by not having her in the locker room and that there’s nothing we can do about it, that we basically have to roll over and accept it, or we cannot use our own locker room. The complaint also stated that “While Lia covers with a towel sometimes, there’s a decent amount of nudity,” with one swimmer explaining that “she and others have had a glimpse at [his] private parts.” Gaines told Carlson that “Thomas’ teammates have actually reached out to me and thanked me personally for doing this.”