Simone Manuel made history recently when she became the first black woman to ever win an individual event in Olympic swimming on Thursday night.
Advertisement
The 20-year-old, Texas born swimmer earned a silver medal with Team USA during the women’s 4X100 meter freeform relay almost a week ago on Saturday. “This medal is for the people who come behind me and get into the sport and hopefully find love and drive to get to this point”.
Phelps is now up 28 Olympic medals overall, with 22 of them gold. Here are seven tips to keep in mind if you want Simone Manuel’s Olympic glow after your next swimming sesh.
Girl, you have! Major congrats are in order for the Olympian!
Simone Manuel’s historical swimming feat at the Olympics is all the motivation we need to move our workout plan underwater.
But the significance of an accomplishment like Manuel’s is even more stark when placed into a cultural context.
The victory, though slightly overshadowed by Manuel, also marked a milestone for Canada.
Back in 2000, he won gold in the men’s 50 free, becoming the first swimmer of African-American descent to win gold at a Games. It was for people that came before me and inspired me to stay in the sport.
This year, the Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Rio noted that Biles, Olympic medalist Gabby Douglas and Olympic first-timer Laurie Hernandez make up the most diverse gymnastics team in United States history.
“In like three feet of water, I’d panic”, he said. He cited numbers that “68.9 percent of African American children had ‘low or no swim ability, ‘” according to USA Swimming, and were 5 1/2 times more likely to drown that white children.
“Simone x2”, Biles tweeted on Friday, adding a gold medal emoji to a selfie of the two Olympic champions.
Katie Ledecky, Women’s 200m Freestyle – Swedish sprint swimmer Sarah Sjostrom was neck and neck with Ledecky through the entire race, but Ledecky managed to stave her off and win gold #2 by 0.35 seconds.
Since then, a few others have risen to the top, including Lia Neal (who won bronze in the women’s 400 meter freestyle relay in 2012) and Cullen Jones.
“I never underestimate her and I’ve always thought she was a star”, says Bill O’Toole, head coach of the Toronto Swim Club who coached Oleksiak until last September.
Advertisement
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. Her mother, Nett, posted the picture on Twitter after Manuel’s historic win, and it has since gone viral. “Coming into the race, I tried to take weight of the black community off my shoulders”.
