Tennis great Serena Williams, an Olympic gold medalist, posted a photo of both Manuel and Biles with their gold medals on her Instagram page with the caption “So awesome”. She was joined in triumph by Stanford teammate and good friend Lia Neal, who earlier in the week captured a silver medal as a part of the 4×100 freestyle relay. “She deserves it as much as me”, said Oleksiak, the first athlete born in the 21st century to claim an Olympic gold in an individual event. My childhood was filled with memories of beach visits, games of Marco Polo, and my dad tossing me around in the water. “She’s just ready to swim.'” Manuel went on to swim with the First Colony Swim Team in Sugar Land and now swims for Stanford University. “The fastest woman in the United States is African-American”, a contributor stated.
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LeBron James may have not come to this year’s Olympics in Rio to play basketball, but he’s still watching.
“She wants to be seen as an individual who just like everyone else has worked hard to be where she is”, Sharron Manuel said.
Manuel, 20, already understands the significance of her accomplishment. He said the girl once held a plank so long he had to stop her because they ran out of time. “Because the title “black swimmer” makes it seem like I’m not supposed to be able to win a gold medal, I’m not supposed to break records”. She doesn’t even know!’ Then she turned around. Manuel’s merely standing on the blocks and jumping into the water was a challenge in and of itself to “America’s most racist institution”: the swimming pool. “I felt like I was swimming every stroke with her”. Indeed, the US women gave their coach a sendoff for the ages, winning the gold by a whopping 8.2 points.
“Simone x2”, Biles tweeted on Friday, adding a gold medal emoji to a selfie of the two Olympic champions. He is a major proponent of USA Swimming’s “Make a Splash” campaign that seeks to prevent drownings by teaching youngsters to swim with an emphasis on minorities. The reality that black people don’t swim is closer to the truth - USA Swimming estimates 70 percent of black children don’t know how to swim and the CDC says they’re 5½ times likelier to drown than white kids - and it’s a symptom of the errors of our forebears. Congrats also poured in from Tony Award-winning actor and writer Lin-Manuel Miranda of the Broadway smash “Hamilton” and NBA Hall of Famer Magic Johnson.
Mercury News referred to Simone Manuel as the “African-American” because she won the same night as decorated Olympian swimmer Michael Phelps.
“The gold medal wasn’t just for me, it was for people who have come before me and inspired me to stay in the sport, and for people who believe they can’t do it”, she said.
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I am so proud of @simone_manuel First African American female to get a GOLD medal.
