Manuel will be in Lane 7 of Saturday night’s final as she looks to sweep the sprint freestyle events.
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Manuel’s milestone will hopefully inspire a new generation to take those first few strokes in the pool, and kick start more swimming lessons and clubs across the country. Manuel broke down in tears when she recognised her historic achievement.
The big sponsorship is still out there – Biles has a hankering for a deal with Mercedes-Benz, mostly because she wants a new auto to match her mother’s – and so are other offers to come, including appearances on awards shows and the upcoming USA Gymnastics victory tour. But I do hope it kind of goes away.
“It was a great moment, but I still have work to do”, Manuel said late Friday night as she walked toward the practice pool at the Olympic Aquatics Stadium. So they put their youngest child into swimming lessons at a pool near their home in Sugar Land, Texas, located about 20 miles southwest of Houston, when she was seven. She still keeps in touch with her first coach, even inviting her to this year’s Olympic trials in Omaha. “I want to swim; I want to swim; I want to swim.’ And that’s what all this is about”. “I was like, ‘I’ll take it!'” “I tried to take the weight of the black community off my shoulders as it is something I carry with me being in this position”.
“They might develop a love for the sport, but the most important issue for me is that all minorities need to be water safe and not be afraid of the water”.
“To me, this win shows that black people are resilient and soar through adversity”, she wrote in an email.
Manuel said: “It means a lot to me, especially what’s going on in the world today and some of the issues with police brutality”.
Simone Manuel, a 20-year-old black female swimmer, and Simone Biles, a 19-year-old black female gymnast, dominated in two sports in which most USA competitors are white.
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?
Manuel surely will field numerous same questions Jones and McClendon received after they accomplished their Olympic triumphs. According to USA Swimming statistics, 70 percent of African Americans and 60 percent of Hispanic and Latino children can not swim compared to 40 percent of whites.
“This medal is not just for me”, Manuel said.
“Those antics really fired him up and brought out a much better performance than we would had seen otherwise”, Coughlin said.
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Simone was at its most popular (310th) in 1988, but has dipped recently and was the 821st most used female name in 2015.
