Gaines says she lost out on a trophy to transgender swimmer Lia Thomas. Now she is a political campaigner trying to level the playing field, she says, for cis women and girls

American political activist and former champion swimmer Riley Gaines took to social media before election day on November 5 to urge all men to vote for Republican candidate and former president Donald Trump.

“They can call you a Nazi. They can call you deplorable. They can call you garbage. But don’t give them the pleasure of calling you the beta man who didn’t get out and vote,” Gaines wrote in captions for a video on X.

In the video, she goes on to tell viewers that Trump, shot in an assassination attempt in July, “took a bullet” for all men. “The least you could do is vote for the man. Vote like your country was taken from you – because it was,” she says. “We need you men to go out and vote to make America affordable again, to make America safe again, to make America healthy again. To make America great again.”

Gaines has been a vocal supporter of Trump this election year, but what do we know about the former college swimmer and anti-trans activist? Read on to find out more about Riley Gaines.

She was raised in an athletic family

Riley Gaines was born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee. She pursued a degree in health sciences at the University of Kentucky, in Lexington.

Under the auspices of the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA), she won swimming championship medals around the world, having been brought up by parents who were college athletes themselves.

Gaines’ father Brad represented Tennessee’s Vanderbilt University at American football, while her mother Telisha played softball for Austin Peay State University, also in Tennessee.

She’s anti-trans