American Manuel makes Olympic history

Olympic swimmer Simone Manuel made history Thursday night in Rio De Janeiro when she became the first Black woman to win an individual Olympic gold medal in swimming, taking the top prize in the 100-meter freestyle. Finishing the women’s 100-meter freestyle at lightning speed, Manuel tied with the Canadian swimmer Penny Oleksiak at a mere 52.70 seconds, which meant both of the swimmers successfully shaved 0.01 seconds off of the previous Olympic standard of 52.71 set earlier in the Rio games by Australian swimmer Cate Campbell. Check out Mark Tewksbury congratulating Oleksiak on her first Olympic gold medal.

“This medal is not just for me, it’s for the African-Americans who have come before me and been an inspiration”, Manuel said afterward.

Manuel’s Olympic medal is the first for a USA swimmer in the women’s 100 freestyle since Natalie Coughlin took the bronze at the 2008 Games, and the first win since Carrie Steinseifer and Nancy Hogshead tied for gold in 1984. “And I’ve seen it successfully executed to the highest level and hopefully we can take some really good, keen, willing kids and help them achieve their goals as well”.

When asked about the significance of being the first African American woman to win gold in this event, Manuel said, “This medal is not just for me”.

That’s why, when Manuel won gold Thursday night, she wasn’t just an athlete excelling at her sport.

“It comes with the territory, because there aren’t many of us in the sport of swimming, and we definitely talk a lot about that with Simone”, Sharron Manuel said.

She touched the wall with her right hand – a smooth, decisive jab – and pulled her head up and out of the water.

We’re not an unusual African-American family. Even as her family went wild in the stands, Oleksiak didn’t turn.

Manuel admitted that it hasn’t always been easy being a black swimmer in the spotlight.

These new medals added to Team USA’s 38 medals overall-16 gold, 10 silver and 12 bronze-and #POCMedalCount’s 13 medals. We had only lived in Dallas, Texas, for three years since immigrating from Nigeria, but stories of children-black children-drowning in community pools and lakes led them to enroll me in a tadpole swimming class.

Swimming has struggled to attract minorities in part because typically those who can’t swim had parents who also could not swim and were fearful of drowning. Around the same time, pools in cities around the country were becoming officially racially segregated. Between 1950 and 1955, the NAACP was involved in multiple anti-discrimination lawsuits for swimming pools after black patrons were denied access to swim at pools and beaches, including Isaacs v. Baltimore. “I’m not going to deny or pretend that that’s not who I am”. “She trains very hard, very smart and if there’s a challenge, she is very capable of rising to the occasion on a very consistent basis”, he said.

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