Mom didn’t have an answer. I don’t know, so let’s look it up, ‘ ” said Sharron Manuel, Simone’s mother. “At that moment she really realized she was OK with who she was”. I love seeing the way she attacks things.
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In all, Stanford swimmers have accumulated 10 medals in six days at the Rio Olympic Games, and have several chances to add to that total.
“I’m not sure if this will change the perception immediately”, Sharron said.
The 20-year-old from Sugar Land, Texas, had just become the first African American woman to win an individual gold medal in swimming. She took two seconds off her previous world record set earlier this year.
She grabbed hold of it Friday night, etching her name into the record books. “We are doing it in UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and hopefully Saudi Arabia will try to get there”. She was staying off her phone that froze up because of an overload of text messages and calls. “It was definitely something I found inspiring, and I hope I inspire other young women back home to get into swimming”.
They are the Olympic swimmers nobody saw on prime-time TV on Friday night, the ones who weren’t fast enough to advance from the 50-meter freestyle morning heats, some finishing 15 seconds behind the best women in their event.
Manuel recognizes the significance of her achievement, yet she has never wanted to be defined exclusively by the color of her skin. It’s not just about her skin color.
But now her daughter is part of the history, part of that learning process.
It is also Denmark’s first Olympic swimming medal in eight years, as they were shut out in 2012.
She put her head in her hands and wept in the pool after she tied 16-year-old Canadian Penny Oleksiak and realized the depth of her achievement.
“But at the same time, I would like to see the day when there are more of us and it’s not Simone “the black swimmer”, she told a news conference after her victory.
Manuel raced the 50m freestyle at 9:03 p.m. ET and will anchor the 4x100m medley relay at about 9:50 p.m. ET.
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As a child, Manuel always loved the water.
