https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=5rUdU36nshM
Tell me about the locker room situation and then also tell me about what it was like to compete that day. I’ll start by kind of filling you in on the competition. So that first day of competition was, I don’t have any events that fall on this day, so this was a day that I didn’t compete. But this was the 500 freestyle was one of the events, which was the event that Leo swam the first day. Again, being an event I didn’t compete in, I got to sit on the side of the pool and watch this and if you don’t know how swimming works at this level, you swim in the morning, you have to swim prelims, but you have to qualify for finals to come back and swim again at night. So top 16, make it back and swim again. And so I’m watching prelims in the morning and there’s several heats, maybe eight or so heats. And so this girl comes up next to me, she had just swam in one of the earlier heats. Her name is Rekha, she swam for Virginia Tech, she’s a fifth year because of COVID, we got an extra year of eligibility to which she took. She was from Hungary and she stayed in the US. I asked her, I was like, why did you take your fifth year? And she said, I wanted to become an All-American. And so she was standing next to me, she was out of breath, her heart rate was high and she was watching the result board to see if she made top 16. And she realizes as the last heat dives in the water, which this is the heat that Leah is swimming in in the morning, she realizes she’s going to be right on the cusp of making it back. She watches Leah dominates, beats everyone in the water by seconds, which in swimming even one second is a ton. But Leah beat everyone in the water by multiple seconds, body lengths, and these are Olympians, these are the most impressive female swimmers of all time. But again, beats everyone. Rekha looks up to the result board and she realized she placed 17th. And I knew her relatively, I didn’t know her well, but I knew her name. And we’re standing next to each other and she grabs me, grabs my hand, looks at me with tears coming down her face. And this is when my feelings shifted because up until this point, I felt kind of mad, just confused. I was mad that the NCAA frustrated, they didn’t see it how I saw it. But she grabbed my hand, tears rolling down her face. And she says, I just got beat by someone who didn’t even have to try. And that’s when my feelings shifted to heartbreak. Seeing how this affected her, knowing she put in the same work to a level that I did, knowing she stayed an extra year from her home country in Hungary in the States so she could achieve this goal. And she just had that stripped from her. And again, that’s when it felt like I’d been punched in the gut. And so we come back that night and of course, Leah Thomas swims to a national title, beating everyone. The time Leah went this year would have beat everyone in the country again, or sorry, the time Leah went last year would have beat everyone in the country again this year by seconds. So Leah became the first male to win a national title on the women’s side. The next day of competition, this was the day that Thomas and I competed against each other in the 200 freestyle. We both swam in the morning, we qualified top eight, we came back that evening and we raced and almost impossibly enough, we tied. So we went the exact same time down to the hundredth of a second, which I won’t say never happens in swimming, but that’s rare, right? We had to touch the wall at the exact same time. And so we actually tied for fifth place. It wasn’t a best time for either of us. I didn’t perform my best and Thomas, I can speculate. I like how you use that word. I can speculate in a minute about what I think. But we go behind the awards podium after our race and the NCAA official looks at both Thomas and myself and says, great job. You guys tied. We don’t really account for ties in terms of trophies. We only have one. So that trophy goes to Leah. And so I was of course taken aback by this, not because I wanted the tangible trophy. I’m a 12-time All-American, so I have lots of those. But it was the principle of him outright looking at me as if it didn’t matter and telling me that Leah got the trophy. And so I questioned him. What the hell is the justification for that decision? I questioned him. At minimum, you’d expect a coin toss or something like that to randomize it. So what the hell is going on there exactly? And I asked exactly that. I said, you know, why? I understand we tied. I understand there’s one trophy, but why are you adamant on Thomas having this trophy? And he was not prepared to answer this. They hadn’t been questioned. And when I say they, I mean the NCAA. Leah hadn’t been questioned for anything they had done thus far. So he kind of stumbled on his words and said, oh, well, we’re just doing this in chronological order, to which I press back again. Okay. I said, what are you being chronological about? Because we tied. And if you’re referring to our names, I’m certain that G comes before T. So what are you being chronological about? To which he didn’t have an answer. He says back, well, Leah has to have the trophy for photos. You can pose with this one, but you’ll have to give it back. And you go home empty handed and Leah takes the trophy home. We can eventually mail you one. Oh, so Leah has to have Leah has to have the trophy for photos. Okay. So that’s the rationale. Okay. So let’s, let’s just delve into that for a second. So now I’m going to put myself in Leah Thomas’s place and Will Thomas’s place. And I’m going to think, well, you know, I’m six foot four and I’m a man and I just tied this young woman who’s been working her whole life to become a fast swimmer. And comparatively speaking, she’s a much faster swimmer than me because I was 462nd among my peers and she’s third. And so, and now I’ve tied her and now these people have come up and they’re arbitrarily going to award a trophy to me, even though there’s no evidence that I deserved it. At best, there’s a 50% crack, 50% chance that I’m the deserving party here. So what that would mean is that if Leah Thomas was being a proper gentleman, let’s say he would have done one of two things. He would have said, well, we have to flip a coin or I won’t take the trophy. Or he would have said, well, I’m not going to take the trophy because it’s unfair that you gave it to me under these circumstances. And yet he did neither. Instead, he took the trophy and he went and posed for the damn photographs. And so it’s very difficult for me as a clinician to see anything in that other than all the hallmarks of extraordinarily narcissistic and entitled behavior because it is such a violation of what would you say? The minimum professional athletic standards, that it’s a kind of miracle. And the fact that the NCAA would promote that kind of pathological narcissistic behavior is really quite the bloody miracle. So and anyways, that’s what happened. So now he’s out there, what, parading around with this trophy towering over the girls. And we are watching him do this. What the hell are you thinking? Is he actually enjoying himself? It’s so preposterous, right? Because I just can’t imagine how anybody can be foolish enough to think that what they’ve done actually constitutes an accomplishment. And then to get all that false attention, you’re such a hero. You’ve made such sacrifices. It’s all, it’s lies at every single level of analysis. And yet he’s basking in the glory. And also claiming that anybody who might object is nothing but a prejudiced bully when in fact he’s 100% and obviously the bully abetted by the NCAA. So you’re watching this. What the hell are you thinking? It felt as if I had been reduced down to a photo op. That’s how I felt. I felt like again, everything that I’d worked my entire life for was reduced to this photo opportunity to validate the feelings of a male at the expense of my own, not just my own, every female swimmer at that meet. It felt as if, of course, I understand the implications of Title IX, which was just to ensure equal opportunities and prevent discrimination on the basis of sex. It felt as if we were totally throwing it out of the window in that moment. We were doing a 180 and the guise of being progressive, we were moving forward. This is progress. This is not progress. This is taking us back at least 50 years in time, 51 years in time to 1972 when Title IX was enacted. This is not progress. How can we sit here and actually say that women losing out on opportunities, women losing spots on the podium to a male is progress? That is quite literally the opposite. That’s how I felt. I felt as if it was at this point, truthfully, when I realized I was fed up because I knew up until this point, I knew the unfair competition was wrong. This wasn’t trivial. I knew this. I knew the locker room was long, which I know I’m going to touch on because I think it’s important. I knew that was wrong. But this piece, this whole trophy incident, and again, it wasn’t about the tangible trophy for me. It wasn’t about something as simple as holding it. It was the principle behind it.