Oleksiak, the first Olympic champion born in the 21st century, has now won four medals in Rio. (She shared first place with Canada’s Penny Oleksiak in the 100-meter freestyle). In fact, Ledecky began swimming at age 6 to follow in her big bother’s footsteps.
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It was the second time the women’s 100 freestyle had ended in such a fashion – the 1984 Los Angeles Games saw a tie between Americans Nancy Hogshead and Carrie Steinseifer in 55.92s.
The clinic’s organizer, Jeffield Jefferson of the city of Houston, now hopes her win will inspire other African-American athletes. He is on the team again in Rio.
A string of fatal shootings of black men and women by white police officers has triggered protests, some violent, across the United States in recent weeks. She doesn’t even know!’ Then she turned around. Disturbingly, USA swimming estimates that 70 percent of African-American and Hispanic kids in the US can not swim.
Four years later at Athens, Maritza Correia became the first female medal victor, collecting a relay silver.
The original headline on this story was insensitive and has been updated to acknowledge the historic gold medal wins by both Simone Manuel and Michael Phelps.
When Simone Manuel touched the pool wall at the end of her swimming event in Rio, she set both an Olympic and an American record. I hope that I’m an inspiration to others to get out there and try swimming.
Neal pumped Manuel up before the nighttime finals by singing and dancing together.
Manuel’s parents put her in swimming lessons at age 4 so she’d learn how to be safe in water, she said this year.
Manuel, who swims collegiately at Stanford, eventually took part in a historical NCAA championship race.
The title “black swimmer” makes it seem like I’m not supposed to be able to win a gold medal or break records. “I want to win just like everybody else”.
“With Simone Manuel winning, she’s going to inspire a generation, not only of black children and African-Americans, but young girls as well”, he said.
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“She’s the first and hopefully, she won’t be the last”, he says. “But I do hope it kind of goes away”.
