Riley Gaines lauds anchor Sage Steele for slamming Lia Thomas despite being forced not to do so

Riley Gaines applauded the former ESPN anchor Sage Steele for refusing to step down from speaking against Lia Thomas and the inclusion of transgender athletes in women's sports, even after the network asked her to stay silent.

Steele appeared on Outkick's Gaines for Girls podcast and stated that she and Sam Ponder, Sunday NFL Countdown host, were instructed to be more discreet after their tweets slamming Thomas and other trans athletes competing against women.

During the podcast, Steele informed about the incident but also mentioned that she was undeterred by saying,

“I was asked to stop tweeting about it. I was asked to stop doing anything, or saying anything about it on social media because I was offending others at the company. I made sure I sent up another tweet that night after I received that email because like, no," Sage said.

"And it’s, let’s stop living in this lie. And once again, oh, you’re going to you’re to silence me and Sam. She was told the same thing, for this issue, but they were going to let everybody else talk about all these other things that are not even related to sports on our sports programming," she added.

Steele shared a video from the podcast and wrote,

"I still refuse to accept that women have to be silent about supporting other women, silent about speaking the truth - even if our employers are the ones trying to silence us."

Riley Gaines applauded Steele for voicing her opinions fearlessly by resharing her post and reacting with a few fire emojis.

Riley Gaines criticizes ESPN for promoting Lia Thomas in Women’s History Month

Riley Gaines criticizes ESPN

Riley Gaines called out on ESPN for featuring Lia Thomas in the 'Celebrating Women's History World' special.

The video was released in March 2023, describing Lia Thomas' journey from being a male swimmer to transitioning into a female athlete. Thomas and Gaines tied for fifth place at the 2022 NCAA Championships, with the trophy being only awarded to Thomas.

During the podcast with Sage Steele, Gaines condemned ESPN saying,

"The special was surrounding Lia Thomas and how brave he is and how much adversity he had to overcome and I remember watching this and hearing the voiceover, of course noticing it was a woman and I just remember thinking to myself I could not imagine being a woman working there, being asked to report on this issue with a smile on my face."