Riley Gaines runs a flower farm in Nashville with Highland cows, alpacas, and a daughter who just learned to walk. She wakes up at 4 a.m. to work out with her entire family. And she refuses to let a tie with a male swimmer define her legacy.
The 12-time All-American swimmer sat down with The Daily Wire to talk about life beyond the headlines — mornings on her Nashville farm, how motherhood shifted her entire purpose, and what she’s doing to celebrate America’s 250th birthday.
Sporting an oversized Parke sweatshirt from the set of “The Riley Gaines Show,” the 26-year-old athlete laughed easily while describing the oppressively humid heat wave moving through Nashville for the July 4th weekend.
“The forward-facing side of me is honestly such a small part of who I am and the things that I care about.”
It’s almost impossible to separate Riley from her advocacy. Ever since she tied transgender-identifying male swimmer Lia Thomas for fifth place during the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championship final in 2022 — and was forced to hold a sixth-place trophy as Thomas held fifth and raked in the accolades — Riley has fearlessly led the charge to keep men out of women’s competition.
She regrets not speaking up sooner about a situation she saw brewing.
“Honestly, had I not been personally impacted … I don’t think that I would have taken that initial leap of faith,” she said. The University of Kentucky grad was on track for a career in dentistry, but instead became one of the most prominent female athletes in the world.
By 2025, she was standing behind President Donald Trump as he signed the order to ban transgender athletes from women’s sports.
“Riley is just a tremendous athlete, and it was a very unfair situation,” Trump said. “I want to thank Riley. She really has been at the forefront.”
Maybe her timing wasn’t late, but instead, divine. The interview came just hours after the Supreme Court’s ruling on Title IX, which upheld bans on biological males competing against girls and women.
After years of death threats, false headlines, and overwhelming vitriol, Riley accepts the win for female athletes everywhere. She humbly shrugs off questions about whether any of this would have happened without her.
“I feel indebted to the women who fought before me,” she said, explaining how “deeply regressive and utterly misogynistic” so-called progressive policy has been for female athletes. “My grandma, when she was in middle school and high school, didn’t have a category for sports. I feel indebted to the women in that generation who fought so I could achieve and succeed.”
She’s effectively blazing the trail for her daughter’s generation.
“I don’t feel like I deserve any of the credit here,” she said. “I’m just doing my part as one person.”
Flower Farming and 4 a.m. Workouts
“We are flower farmers,” she said of the daylily-gilded property she shares with her British-born husband Louis Barker and their daughter Margot. “This time of year is really, really beautiful. They’ve all bloomed, so our yard is like colorful flowers everywhere.”
If the pair isn’t busy cultivating crops, they have their animals to tend to: three dogs, three donkeys, four alpacas, a horse, and Pinterest-worthy cows.
“I’ve got the Highland cows with the big fuzzy faces and the big horns … Go to Hobby Lobby and you see like 10,000 of these cows on every form of decoration.”
She squeezes in her workouts before the sun comes up.
“I wake up super duper early — in the 4 a.m., 5 a.m. hours — and I work out.” A fan of running, weightlifting, Pilates, and F45 Training, Riley’s never met a workout she didn’t like. “I’m one of those chronic gym hoppers,” she admits. “I have a million different gym memberships.”
She also has the support to make those sessions count. “I generally work out every single day with my mom, my grandma, my older sister, my younger sister, and my dad.”
But before the day really gets rolling, Riley enjoys a caffeine ritual that openly excludes the coffee machine in her kitchen. “I don’t know why I ever bought that because there’s just something about swiping your card and getting coffee from a coffee place that feels important,” she said. “[It’s] a critical part of my day.”
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Motherhood Changed Everything
“It’s so funny now she has teeth and she’s walking,” Riley said of her daughter, Margot. “I’m like, how is this? Who let this happen? Why is my baby so big and old?”
Less than a year after Margot’s arrival in September, it’s clear Riley’s focus has shifted.
“I don’t even prefer to go by Riley,” she joked. “I just want to be known as ‘Margot’s Mom’ … Once you have a daughter of your own it reprioritizes everything in your life.”
“She is my whole world and my whole identity.”
She’s almost surprised at how naturally she tunes into her daughter’s needs. “Is she hungry? Does she need her diaper changed? Is she tired? Even when it’s not any of those things, it’s thinking about when she grows up, what color is her hair gonna be,” she said. “It’s hard to describe, that sort of shift that happens in a very primal way … but she is my whole world and my whole identity.”
A Full Day of Rest
Riley’s parents, grandparents, and siblings all live within five minutes of each other and spend time together daily. Inspired by Charlie Kirk’s final book “Stop In The Name of God,” weekend gatherings involve a full day of rest.
“I’ve really worked hard to implement that in my life, and I have found so much value in unplugging on the weekends and disconnecting,” Riley explained. “I truthfully believe, as human beings, we were not designed to consume as much as we do.”
Whether it’s uncoupling from the news cycle or the latest celebrity scandal, she said it all started with walking away from her phone.
“Initially it was hard,” she said. “It’s this weird instinct where you almost pick up your phone without even realizing it … I would find myself opening TikTok or opening X and then closing out the app and then almost immediately opening it again. I’m like, what am I doing?”
Now, getting through a Sunday without doomscrolling feels refreshing. “Maybe it didn’t necessarily come naturally, but that is by far my favorite time of the entire week,” Riley shared. “Being able to wake up, get myself ready, then get my baby ready … We go to church, after church you go get a coffee, and you kind of have that catch-up reset day where you clean the house, you put everything together.”
“I find I’m the best version of myself and the most recharged and rejuvenated version of myself when I am with my husband. We do that together, and I think it has helped us both individually, but also together, and certainly as parents to our little baby.”
Cooking Skills Still in Progress
“For context, never have I ever been a good cook, chef, [or] baker,” Riley laughed when asked who does the cooking for the extended family dinners she hosts several times a week. “I’m impatient. I just want to throw everything in the pot together and have it be done at the same time.”
She points to Louis as the chef in the family. “My husband went to boarding school and he learned all of these things about, you know, you have to let the garlic sauté … But he made a comment the other day, like, ‘Man, it’s hard being the stay-at-home mom.'” Riley immediately committed to honing her chops in the kitchen.
“I can boil spaghetti now, so that’s a plus. I can sometimes hard-boil an egg.” She laughed. “I’m still working on it. I have a childlike level of culinary skills.”
Michael Jackson on Repeat
“I don’t want to hear about the allegations! Don’t tell me,” Riley declared. “I’m a Michael Jackson fan. I wish I could communicate how many times I’ve listened to the song ‘Human Nature.’ I go around my house doing the Michael Jackson dances and trying to emulate that high-pitched voice that he has.”
She points to the recent Michael Jackson movie for reviving interest in his music, but she’s been an MJ fan since back in the day. “I think I was Michael Jackson for like three Halloweens in a row.”
As for literary entertainment, if she isn’t re-reading her favorite Colleen Hoover romance novel, Riley hits up nonfiction. “I just find a lot of value in learning valuable, factual information,” she said. “I finished ‘Mere Christianity’ not that long ago by C.S. Lewis [and] started ‘The Abolition of Man’ after that.”
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Taking the High Road
You might expect someone who describes herself as “hyper competitive, very fiery, and not necessarily afraid of confrontation” to be a master at the art of an online takedown.
But learning not to “punch down” has been a lesson Riley’s taken to heart.
“It was very easy for me to fire back, get like the Twitter thumbs, but I learned pretty early on to not punch down,” she said. “I have thought about that so many times over the past few years.”
She has famously feuded with media commentator Keith Olbermann, sports reporter Jemele Hill, and even Olympic gymnast Simone Biles. When Riley once referred to a transgender-identifying male athlete as a “boy,” Biles called Riley “sick” and “a straight up sore loser” on X, adding, “Bully someone your own size, which would ironically be a male.”
Biles later apologized.
These days, Riley’s taking the high road. “As opposed to firing off the first thing that comes to mind, which is natural for me, I take a step back to be the bigger person. Don’t punch down. Don’t give relevancy where relevancy is not deserved.”
Unsurprisingly, stepping into a public role she never anticipated has required serious guts. “The legacy that I want to leave behind is one that speaks of boldness and leadership, and of course, courage.”
Along with her faith in God, she hopes to inspire others with her joy. She describes it as “My faith to persist, to continue on, to keep going forward with a smile on my face … All of that really comes into perspective when you have a daughter. I hope one day she will look back and know that her mom is someone who fought for her.”
Patriotic Pickleball and America’s 250th
Since they regularly play together as a family, the extended Gaines gang is planning a patriotic pickleball tournament for the holiday weekend.
But Riley has yet to gel with the sport.
“I’m really not that good,” she laughed. “It’s a hard pill for me to swallow because I’m used to being pretty exceptional at things that generally require athleticism … running, jumping … I played softball my whole life, so I’m used to being pretty successful in my athletic endeavors.”
Pickleball is her Kryptonite. “I think I hit it too hard and I get angry.”
She also plans to stop by the Great American State Fair and enjoy the fireworks. And considering she’s a Nashville girl, Riley has a favorite brand of cowboy boots for a fashionable Fourth of July. “I have these really awesome green ones from Petite Paloma,” she said. They’re an investment, but she adds, “If you’re gonna get a pair of boots, you got to do it right.”
“Going into America’s 250th, there’s so much to be excited about, optimistic about, and grateful for,” Riley said.
“I wake up every single day with real and true gratitude.”
