Biles calls Gaines ‘sick’ in trans rights row

Olympic champion Simone Biles has criticized former US swimmer and activist Riley Gaines for her online comments about a transgender woman softball player.

Gaines made fun of Minnesota State High School League bydeleting comments about the Chaplin Park girls’ team celebrating the State Championship on their Facebook post. She has frequently spoken out about transgender female athletes competing in women’s sports.

A transgender player makes up the Chaplin Park team.

You’re truly sick because you lost a race all this campaigning. Straight up loser, according to Biles’ writing on X.

At the 2022 NCAA Championships, Gaines and transgender woman Lia Thomas shared fifth place.

In the following year, World Aquatics voted to prohibit transgender women from competing in women’s elite races if they had experienced any stage of male puberty.

Since then, Thomas has attempted to change the rules in court.

You should be “founding a way to make sports inclusive, and perhaps finding a way to create a new avenue where trans people feel safe in sports.” There might be a transgender category in “every sport,” remarked Biles.

However, you bully them instead, and one thing is certain: no one in sports is safe around you.

Biles, a seven-time gold medalist, has consistently campaigned for mental health.

To give her mental health a priority, she withdrew from the women’s team final at the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2021, as well as four other individual finals.

Gaines responded to Biles in follow-up posts, calling Biles’ stance “so disappointing” and saying she shouldn’t use her platform to support transgender women in women’s sports.

Gaines has stated that she felt “cheated, betrayed, and violated” since tying hands with Thomas in 2022.

She has fought for the prohibition of transgender athletes competing against girls and women.

Gaines was present at the White House in February when Donald Trump ratified a law preventing transgender women from competing in women’s sports.

Under the equality laws of the UK Supreme Court, judges in April decided that a woman must be defined by biological sex.