Female Swimmer Says She Felt ‘Extreme Discomfort’ Sharing Locker Room with Lia Thomas

A former NCAA swimmer who competed against Lia Thomas says she experienced “extreme discomfort” while sharing a locker room with the transgender swimmer.

Riley Gaines, a former swimmer for the University of Kentucky who has been a frequent critic of Thomas, told Fox News’s Tucker Carlson on Wednesday that event organizers at the NCAA championships had not forewarned her that Thomas, who is a man, would be sharing a locker room with female competitors.

“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,” Gaines said on Tucker Carlson Today.

“So not only were we forced to race against a male, we were forced to change in the locker room with one,” Gaines said.

“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.”

Gaines leveled the charge that the NCAA had failed to secure and defend the integrity of women’s sports.

“Thomas, who had an undistinguished swimming career for three seasons when competing for UPenn as a male, made headlines this year after a first-place finish in the women’s 500-yard freestyle event in the NCAA’s swimming championship,” Breitbart’s Warner Todd Huston reports.

Earlier this year, FINA, the international swimming governing body, effectively banned transgender swimmers from women’s sports by instituting a policy where only athletes who transitioned before the age of 12 would be allowed to compete.

This week, the NCAA denied the University of Pennsylvania’s nomination of Thomas as “Woman of the Year.”