Olympian gymnast Simone Biles on Friday evening clashed with conservative activist Riley Gaines over a transgender athlete’s participation on a Minnesota highschool’s softball staff.
Gaines railed in opposition to a post on social platform X from the Minnesota State Excessive Faculty League that celebrated Champlin Park Excessive Faculty’s first softball state championship win.
“Feedback off lol,” Gaines wrote, referencing MSHSL’s X settings. “To be anticipated when your star participant is a boy.”
The pitcher on Champlin Park’s staff identifies as transgender and pitched a shutout, delivering a 6-0 win over Bloomington Jefferson Excessive Faculty on Friday.
“You’re really sick, all of this campaigning since you misplaced a race,” Biles responded to Gaines, a former collegiate swimmer, calling her a “bully” and a “straight up sore loser.”
Gaines, a pupil athlete turned political pundit, has develop into a vocal critic in opposition to the participation of transgender athletes in women and girls’s sports activities. Her rise on the proper got here after tying for fifth place within the 2022 NCAA Championships with transgender swimmer and LGBTQ advocate Lia Thomas.
“You need to be uplifting the trans group and maybe discovering a solution to make sports activities inclusive OR creating a brand new avenue the place trans really feel protected in sport,” Biles continued in her thread on Friday. “Possibly a transgender class IN ALL sports activities!!
Earlier this yr, Gaines joined President Trump on the White Home when he signed an executive order barring the participation of trans athletes in sports activities that align with their gender identification. This order prompted an investigation into the Minnesota highschool sports activities governing physique and the state’s federal funding, which the North Star State is fighting in courtroom.
The previous College of Kentucky swimmer responded to the 11-time Olympic medalist’s protection of the younger athlete, calling her remarks “disappointing.”
“It isn’t my job or the job of any girl to determine the way to embrace males in our areas,” Gaines wrote on X. “You possibly can uplift males stealing championships in girls’s sports activities with YOUR platform.”
“Males do not belong in girls’s sports activities and I say that with my full chest,” she added.
Final month, a conservative group on behalf of three softball gamers sued the North Star State over its 2015 transgender athlete coverage, local outlets reported.