Simone Manuel is one of the best swimmers in the world.
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Thursday night Simone Manuel became the first African-American woman to win an individual gold medal in swimming after winning the women’s 100m freestyle at the Rio Olympic Games.
In the first event on Saturday night, Manuel tapped the wall at 24.09 – just.02 behind Denmark’s Pernille Blume.
Manuel qualified for the 100 free finals on Wednesday when she was second overall in the prelims with a time of 53.32, and then finished first in the semifinals at 53.11. It came with the territory, Sharron said, because there were so few minority swimmers.
“I ain’t gettin’ in no water”, my grandmother used to say with a dismissive wave while I begged her to sit on the steps in the shallow end of my suburb’s public pool while I splashed around.
“That helped keep the nerves off me”, Manuel said.
Tennis great Serena Williams, an Olympic gold medalist, posted a photo of both Manuel and Biles with their gold medals on her Instagram page with the caption “So wonderful”.
At age 11, Simone Manuel asked her mother the question all African-American competitive swimmers inevitably ask: Why aren’t there more swimmers that look like me?
That tied her with 16-year-old Canadian Penny Oleksiak, the pair sharing a new Olympic record and both receiving a gold medal.
Jeff Wiltse, the author of Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America spoke to NPR a number of years ago about the issue.
“I think that was a big shock”.
Manuel commented on police brutality, calling her win significant given the political climate in the US, where it is every other day that the public hears about police killing civilians.”It means a lot, especially with what is going on in the world today, some of the issues of police brutality”, Manuel told reporters, according to USA Today.
“When you see someone who looks like you achieve something at that level it lets you know right away that I can”, Jefferson said.
“Yeah, that is something I have definitely struggled with a lot”, said Manuel, a 20-year-old from Sugar Land, Texas, who attends college at Stanford. “I didn’t have an answer for it immediately, and I said, ‘That’s a good question”.
“I tried to take the weight of the Black community off my shoulders”.
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United States’ Simone Manuel leaves the pool during a women’s 50-meter freestyle heat during the swimming competitions at the 2016 Summer Olympics, Friday, Aug. 12, 2016, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
