American Anthony Ervin wins men’s 50 freestyle gold

Simone Manuel wasn’t expected to win the gold. She was right back in the pool on Friday, qualifying 11th in the 50-meter freestyle preliminaries. She took two seconds off her previous world record set earlier this year.

When Manuel was asked about what it was like coming up in a sport that is dominated by white athletes, she told reporters it is something she has been conscious of as she’s risen through the ranks of the swimming world.

“I love the Olympics, everybody’s winning gold medals out there and it’s just awesome”, Coren Boyd of Springfield said. Perhaps for Manuel, the lack of media attention was a blessing. My wife, who is half Caucasian and half Japanese, tries to make me feel guilty about not swimming.

But when Simone Manuel touched the wall Thursday night at the end of the women’s 100-meter freestyle at the Rio Olympics, when she blinked out the chlorine and could see the clock, she knew. Her nerves got in the way and she succumbed to the personal pressure. It came with the territory, Sharron said, because there were so few minority swimmers. “Even in that race I let my head get ahead of me and that’s not something that I should do, and it is something that I’ve been working on hard to not do”.

The clinic’s organizer, Jeffield Jefferson of the city of Houston, now hopes her win will inspire other African-American athletes.

“I met other minorities who were facing some of the same things that I was, so through that process I didn’t feel so alone”, she said in March.

If the U.S. women had not captured the landmark medal, Michael Phelps and the men’s 4×100 medley relay squad would have done so, the quartet winning gold in the very next event in the pool. Manuel was moved to tears while the national anthem played, and she sang along.

“I just wanted to re-focus and move forward from the 100”, she said.

The first African-American woman to medal in a swimming event was Maritza Correia, who took silver in the 2004 Athens games as part of the U.S.A.’s 4 x 100m relay team. “It is something I’ve definitely struggled with a lot”, Manuel said. “The memories mean a lot more than the medals to me”.

But it is never as simple as that when you break through barriers.

Every Olympic gold medalist has his or her own way of winding down after an event, and Simone Biles’ favorite post-competition ritual is eating some good old fashioned pepperoni pizza. At 20 years old, Manuel is already a United States Summer Olympic legend. But it exploded again moments later – Phelps, at 31 the most decorated Olympian of all time, had just stopped packing his gear, stood, and turned to the stands, raising his arms and acknowledging the fans. “Lack of facilities and neighborhoods where kids from diverse backgrounds haven’t had that access”.

It was also the makeup of that team – which features an African-American, a Jewish-American, a Puerto Rican-American and a Belizean-American with dual citizenship, and is managed by a Hungarian-Romanian immigrant – that elevated its cultural importance. He has gone on to do some activism around black folks and swimming, encouraging diversity in the pool and increased swimming education. It’s more practical than that; water wreaks havoc on black hair. “I was like, ‘She doesn’t even know!” And then we can call her an inspiration.

Sharron Manuel knew these stats when she and her husband Marc made a decision to have all their kids take swim lessons. “I always had an issue with not seeing “people that looked like me” in the sport. People are going to be excited and say, ‘hey I can do that too'”. “I just wash it and condition it as best as I can”.

“I think that’s really big, especially for the African-American community”, said Alexandria Robinson, a lifeguard at the YMCA. “I do hope that kind of goes away”.