Riley Gaines and former Olympian Sharron Davies have called out the NCAA for continuing to ignore Donald Trump’s executive order that bans transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports.
Gaines referenced Ithaca rower Juniper Gattone on X, posting a picture of the former male competing in the school’s women’s rowing team.
She posted: ‘Wait a minute…I thought the NCAA had a new policy that was in full compliance with Trump’s EO?
‘Nope. Men are still competing in women’s NCAA sports. Meet Juniper (Tyler) Gattone. The NCAA purposefully deceived the public and Donald Trump.’
That prompted Davies, who won an Olympic silver medal in swimming at Moscow 1980, to react and she also tore into Gattone for taking a spot away from a woman.
She wrote: ‘These males are deliberately cheating. They know they have an unfair advantage, they are stealing a place from a female in a female sport category.
Riley Gaines slammed Ithaca’s transgender rower Juniper Gattone for racing against women
Former Olympian Sharron Davies also criticized Gattone for ‘stealing a place from a female’
‘When female sports gets so much less opportunity and cash than male sport does anyway.
‘Women’s sport is not for 2nd rate males who can’t make it in mens sport. Compete by sex. Compete fair.’
Gattone, who stands at 5-foot-10, is a sophomore at Ithaca and studying Environmental Science.
Last season, she rowed in the Novice 8+ boat and helped the Bombers capture their sixth consecutive Liberty League women’s rowing crown. Their boat was also named LL Women’s Rowing Novice Crew of the Year after winning the two-boat final by a massive 37 seconds.
Gattone’s boat was also the top novice boat at the New York State Championships, defeating Army by two seconds.
Trump’s executive order prompted the NCAA to change its participation policy on February 6, limiting competition in women’s sports to athletes assigned female at birth only.
The change was effective immediately and applies to all athletes regardless of previous eligibility reviews. The NCAA has some 1,100 member schools with more than 500,000 athletes, easily the largest governing body for college athletics in the U.S.
‘We strongly believe that clear, consistent, and uniform eligibility standards would best serve today’s student-athletes instead of a patchwork of conflicting state laws and court decisions,’ NCAA President Charlie Baker said. ‘To that end, President Trump’s order provides a clear, national standard.’
The Ithaca Bombers competing in the NCAA Division III level as members of the Liberty League and Easter College Athletic Conference.
Donald Trump signed an executive order banning transgender athletes from women’s sports
Trump’s executive order gives federal agencies latitude to withhold federal funding from entities that do not abide by Title IX in alignment with the Trump administration’s view, which interprets ‘sex’ as the gender someone was assigned at birth.
The U.S. Department of Education has since been investigating potential breaches of Title IX, a 1972 law barring sex discrimination in education.
Last month, Gaines marked three years since she raced against trans swimmer Lia Thomas by celebrating Trump‘s decision to cut $175million in federal funding to the University of Pennsylvania.
And an official White House X account announced on March 19 that the Trump administration had halted $175m in federal funding to UPenn as a result.
The post said the Ivy League school’s policies are ‘forcing women to compete with men in sports’. It added Trump’s tagline: ‘Promises made, promises kept.’
DailyMail.com has contacted Ithaca for comment.
