Manuel will compete again later in the meet in the 50-meter freestyle and previously took silver as part of the 4×100 freestyle relay team.
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Manuel’s victory took on added significance in a sport that still has few people of color, especially in light of the racial divide in the United States.
Manuel said she had not expected to win gold.
The 20-year-old was also asked how it felt to share a gold medal.
Indeed, she was far behind the others in the pool, including Australian favorites Cate and Bronte Campbell.
Instead, it was Manuel who touched at the same time as 16-year-old Oleksiak, the youngest swimmer in the field.
Oleksiak becomes the first Canadian swimmer to win four medals in a single Summer Games.
USA swimmer Simone Manuel made history Thursday night. Manuel was moved to tears while the national anthem played, and she sang along. She found herself training in the same pool as Michael Phelps this week and considers that her Olympic victory.
When Simone Biles, a black woman, won the all-around title at the World Championships in Antwerp, Belgium, in 2013, Italian competitor Carlotta Ferlito told an Italian journalist, “next time, we should also paint our skin black, so then we could win, too”.
At the 2000 Sydney Games, another 21.98 second dead-heat saw Anthony Ervin of the United States and team mate Gary Hall Jr each awarded the 50m freestyle gold.
Claressa Shields, the first American woman to win gold in boxing, tweeted, “Way to go Simone Manuel! It was important for me to do that for her because even at that time I saw she could do something special”.
Canada’s medal haul equalled the solitary silver medal won at the 2004 Games. “It’s for some of the African-Americans that have came before me and have been inspirations and mentors to me”. “It’s for all the people after me who can’t, who believe they can’t do it”.
Neal pumped Manuel up before the nighttime finals by singing and dancing together.
“You have to work hard and be pretty smart to get into a school like this – but honestly, that’s another reason why I picked it, because I wanted to be in this atmosphere and challenge myself”, she told USA Swimming this year.
Manuel, who attends Stanford and has a brother who played basketball at SMU, looks forward to a time when there is greater diversity in the pool.
“The gold medal wasn’t just for me”. “Coming into my first Olympics I didn’t think I was going to be getting a gold medal individually”.
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And Manuel hopes she can just be a swimmer and a champion without her race being a factor. “She knows as a swimmer she did everything she was supposed to do, but she has no idea the ripple effect of what getting first place does because she’s still there”, Cullen said. “I hope I’m an inspiration”.
