It happened to be a gold. Meanwhile, Simone Manuel won silver as part of a relay team and tied for a gold when she and Canadian Penny Oleksiak both set a world record in the 100 meter freestyle.
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“It means a lot, especially with what’s going on in the world today, just with some of the issues with police brutality”, Manuel said. “Hopefully, we’ll come back to the Olympics in four years with more than just one female, maybe 10 or 20”.
One Twitter user discussed the importance of Manuel’s win in the context of Dorothy Dandridge, a 20th-century African-American actress and singer.
“I just want to be an inspiration to others that you can do it”, Manuel said through tears. She is breaking barriers and stereotypes of African-American and swimming with her win, unfortunately, San Jose Mercury News proves she how much more improvement is needed. “But I do hope that it kind of goes away”. When public pools became integrated, the ones in which blacks played in were often poorly maintained and lessons were hardly ever offered and when they were, costs were a factor. In 2013, when Italian Gymnastics Federation official David Ciaralli tried to defend racist comments by Italian gymnast Carlotta Ferlito directed towards Simone Biles, he instead expanded the bigotry to swimming. “Probably about 1 percent of USA swimmers are black, so it gives you an incentive to go out there and show them that we can do it, too”, she said, according to Biography.
And Manuel hopes she can just be a swimmer and a champion without her race being a factor.
With her win Thursday, Oleksiak will enter the record books as the first woman born in the 2000s to win an Olympic gold medal in an individual event. It’s something I carry with me. And I just want to be an inspiration to others that you can do it.
Canadian women are giving us a lot to be proud of at the Rio 2016 Olympics.
She told CNN in March that she at times struggled with being African-American in a sport typically dominated by white athletes.
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.
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – When she was 11, Simone Manuel came home and asked her mother a question: Why weren’t there more people who looked like her in swimming? “But it wasn’t something I was trying to think about before my race, I was just trying to think about swimming as fast as I could and to be happy with whatever outcome”.
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“It challenges me academically and athletically, and socially I get to be around such different people, though we also have something in common by being here”, Manuel told USA Swimming about attending Stanford.
