Crowd boos as boy wins girls’ state championship track and field race in Oregon
A boy pretending to be a girl has officially won a girls’ track and field state championship in Oregon, but as he was pronounced the winner, race spectators showed their disapproval by booing — loudly.
Aayden Gallagher, a 10th-grade student at McDaniel High School in Portland, has been making a name for himself in girls’ track and field competitions this spring. As Blaze News previously reported, Gallagher won a 200M heat by more than five seconds last month. Then at the Portland Interscholastic League Championships a few weeks later, he took home gold in the girls’ 200M and 400M races, assuring himself a spot in the state championships.
‘The roar and standing ovation for Donelson may surpass anything that comes next week at the Prefontaine Classic. Or, yes, the Olympic Trials.’
Well, the Oregon state championships have since come and gone, and Gallagher once again bested the competition. In the girls’ 200M sprint, he turned on the jets with about 30M to go to sneak past Roosevelt High School sophomore Aster Jones and finish in first with a time of 23.82 seconds, about .2 seconds ahead of Jones. DyeStat called it “one of the fastest times in state history.”
As Gallagher crossed the finish line, members of the crowd protested his win by loudly booing. The boos and jeers were so overwhelming that multiple outlets have remarked upon them. LibsofTikTok shared a video of the race — and the crowd’s reaction — on X:
Several outlets have also reported that Gallagher has recently needed “extra security” at practice and in competition and that this security detail whisked Gallagher off the track immediately following his victory, preventing him from shaking hands with his female competitors.
“There was extra security in place for that ceremony. But it did not take away the air of blatant transphobia that was circulating around the stadium,” one attendee told Outsports.
The boos and jeers reportedly continued when Gallagher later stepped to the top of the podium to collect his gold medal.
By contrast, the audience roared with approval on Saturday when two-time defending champion Josie Donelson of Lake Oswego held off Gallagher in the 400M by just .15 seconds to win her third gold medal in the race. “The roar and standing ovation for Donelson may surpass anything that comes next week at the Prefontaine Classic. Or, yes, the Olympic Trials,” DyeStat wrote.
Though Tyler Kelleher, the athletic director at McDaniel High School, and Ryan Keene, the school’s track coach, have helped Gallagher dominate girls’ track events, at least one Oregon coach was frustrated that a male has been allowed to compete against girls at the state championships.
“This is destructive to girls sports,” the unidentified coach told DyeStat in response to a question about Gallagher’s 200M win.
Gallagher declined to speak with the media on Saturday, DyeStat reported. Kelleher and Keene did not respond to Blaze News’ request for comment.
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