Riley Gaines is the star of the show at the Western Conservative Summit
Tiana Lowe Doescher
DENVER — The star of the Western Conservative Summit is not either of the two presidential candidates who headlined the event. It is not House Republicans Ken Buck or Harriet Hageman or even Lauren Boebert, who Jeff Hunt, the co-chairman of the annual conference, says is routinely the most demanded speaker.
Instead, the belle de jour is Riley Gaines, and the 23-year-old swimmer is maybe making the attendees of the summit, which is hosted by Colorado Christian University, care more about feminism than they have in some time.
HOW SAUDI ARABIA IS USING SPORT TO EXPAND ITS REACH
Gaines, a former Division I swimmer at the University of Kentucky, first rose to prominence after she publicly protested being forced to compete against Lia Thomas, the transgender woman who ranked 554th in the 200-yard freestyle when swimming for the University of Pennsylvania as a man. Identifying as a woman, Thomas ranked fifth on the 200-yard freestyle and first on the 500-yard freestyle. (Under the male name of Will Thomas, the same swimmer ranked 65th on the latter.)
At the Colorado Convention Center, Gaines elicits cheers that border on screams. While CCU students, obliged to attend the two-day conference, are often reserved in their plaudits for other speakers, Zoomers can’t get enough of Gaines. In pictures, she’s distinguished only by her platinum blonde waves, as she’s engulfed by literally hundreds of teenagers and 20-something conservatives.
Gaines has previously admitted that she never considered herself a feminist before becoming a right-wing darling in her campaign against biological men in women’s sports. Third-wave feminism, Gaines has said, “almost goes against the co-dependency that I believe the sexes should have.”
“That being said, I do now consider myself a feminist.”
And evidently, Gaines has helped turn the tide for the entire conservative movement.
Until Gaines’ infamous fight against Thomas, conservatives really only invoked women’s sports to mock the WNBA, and Title IX was an accursed tool to discriminate against men persecuted by a witch hunt.
Now, thanks to Gaines, conservatives understand that women’s sports are anything but a joke.
“Who is that?” a kindly Boomer woman asks me, barely able to see Gaines but incapable of missing the cheers surrounding her. When I give her the brief background, this woman immediately stops me, noting that actually, she remembers Gaines from Facebook.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
A 19-year-old teenage staffer from the state GOP rushes up to us, begging for any extra head-on photos with Gaines and her throngs of followers. Mercifully, the Boomer has a shot of Gaines.
“Oh, on social media,” he says, “they’re going to love this.”