Since then, Maritza Correia in 2004 broke the barrier for women of African descent to swim on Team USA, and she won a silver medal on the 4×100-meter freestyle relay team. “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. That’s one way to cover history, which the 20-year-old Manuel made in Rio when she took joint first place in the 100-meter freestyle with Canada’s Penny Oleksiak.
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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.
“Hopefully it will get them inspired”, Manuel said following her victory. “And the idea that she didn’t even know that she had won, was like pure joy”, said Arnica Foulkes.
A swimmer at Stanford, Manuel added to her medal haul in the 50-meter freestyle, winning a silver.
The pair finished in an Olympic record of 52.70 seconds.
Simone Manuel’s gold medal isn’t just for her.
That troubling history has led to an oft-cited statistic from USA Swimming, based on studies conducted by their researchers and others from the University of Memphis, that some 70 percent of black people can’t swim.
“I hope they look at me as someone they can look up to when they feel like they need to speak out against something that they feel is wrong”, King replied.
Manuel’s victory will be a lifetime inspiration to the African kids, who are said to be among the less-fortunate ones in the world.
“That’s not true because I work just as hard as anyone else and I love the sport and I want to win just like everybody else”.
Jones, who didn’t make this year’s Olympic team, tweeted out his pride in Manuel, calling her achievement “amazing”.
She is the first African American to win Olympic Swimming Gold Medal and she sets a milestone that will inspire many especially the young ones.
“I tried to take the weight of the black community off my shoulders”, she said. That confidence resonates when you consider this: Durham, where he lives, had separate “white” and “colored” public pools until city leaders desegregated them in 1963. She simply doesn’t want to be an anomaly.
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Serving as a new source of inspiration for young Black Americans everywhere, the star swimmer’s Olympic feat punches a massive hole in the all-too-common stereotypical assertion that Black people can’t and/or don’t swim.
