Following transgender swimmer Lia Thomas’s victory at the NCAA women’s championship in Atlanta this past weekend, Governor Ron DeSantis will honor the runner-up female swimmer as the true victor.
DeSantis will sign a proclamation, he announced at a press conference Tuesday, that recognizes Sarasota, Fla. native and second-place finisher Emma Weyent as the “best female swimmer” in the women’s 500-yard freestyle event.
“If you look at what the NCAA has done in allowing basically men to compete in women’s athletics, and in this case swimming…you had the number one woman who finished was from Sarasota, Emma Weyent, she won the silver medal, she’s been an absolute superstar her whole career,” DeSantis said.
“To compete at that level is very very difficult. You don’t just roll out of bed and do it. That takes grit. That takes determination…She had the fastest time of any woman in college athletics. Now the NCAA is basically taking efforts to destroy women’s athletics. They’re trying to undermine the integrity of the competition, crowning somebody else the women’s champion, and we think that’s wrong,” he added.
“This is a Floridian who I think deserves to be recognized,” he said.
When University of Pennsylvania senior Lia Thomas finished first in the 500-yard freestyle, the crowd’s applause was considerably less enthusiastic than when Taylor Ruck, a Stanford junior, came in first in the 200-yard freestyle event, NR’s Madeleine Kearns observed. In addition to winning the 500-yard freestyle and beating two Olympic medalists, Thomas secured fifth place in the 200-yard freestyle, and eighth in the 100-yard freestyle, placing in every event the swimmer competed in.
Thomas’s participation in the tournament sparked outrage from many female athletes, as well as their parents, who felt like their chances of advancing were robbed from them by Thomas’s unique male advantages.
Former Olympian and Virginia Tech female swimmer Reka Gyorgy published a letter Sunday openly criticizing the NCAA’s policy allowing biologically male swimmers to compete against women, arguing that Thomas’s inclusion effectively resulted in her elimination from the finals.
“I swam the 500 free at NCAA’s on March 17, 2022, where I got 17th, which means I didn’t make it back to the finals and was first alternate. I’m a 5th year senior, I have been top 16 and top 8 before and I know how much of a privilege it is to make finals at a meet this big,” Gyorgy wrote in a letter to the NCAA obtained by Mary Margaret Olohan of the Daily Wire.