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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., signed a proclamation declaring Florida-native swimmer Emma Weyant the winner of the 500-yeard freestyle competition over transgender athlete Lia Thomas.
“By allowing men to compete in women’s sports, the NCAA is destroying opportunities for women, making a mockery of its championships, and perpetuating a fraud,” the governor wrote on Twitter announcing the proclamation.
“In Florida, we reject these lies and recognize Sarasota’s Emma Weyant as the best women’s swimmer in the 500y freestyle,” he stated.
University of Virginia student, Emma Weyant, made headlines after coming in second to Lia Thomas, a biological male turned transgender athlete.
During a Tuesday press conference, DeSantis slammed the NCAA for “taking efforts to destroy women’s athletics” and declared Weyant “the best female swimmer in the 500-meter freestyle because she earned that.”
While on the 2020 Olympic Swimming Team, Weyant earned a silver medal for the women’s 400-meter in the Summer Olympics held in 2021 in Tokyo, Japan. Weyant should have been declared the winner of last week’s competition after she clocked a time of 4:34.99.
Despite that Thomas was given first place, many have championed the Sarasota-native as the rightful winner of the NCAA Women’s Swimming Championship.
Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake took to Twitter to support Weyant, saying, “Meet Emma Weyant — the young lady that SHOULD be holding a gold medal for winning the NCAA National Championship.
Jeremy Carl, a Senior Fellow at The Claremont Institute, also expressed support for Weyant: “In case you want to know how far gone America is, we just took an NCAA championship away from Olympic individual silver medalist Emma Weyant, a true exemplar of feminine athleticism, and awarded it to someone with a p**** who was competing as a men’s swimmer last year.”
According to the Washington Examiner’s Restoring America, more than 300 Olympians and Olympic coaches have signed a petition to protect women’s sports from unfair transgender participation in sporting events.