Open champion Henrik Stenson is the favorite to bring home a gold medal for Sweden, followed by Sergio Garcia of Spain, Britain’s Justin Rose and Rickie Fowler and Bubba Watson of the U.S.
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Manuel, who is a rising junior on The Farm, set an Olympic and American record to tie for the gold medal in the 100-meter freestyle at Rio Games.
“I think it means a lot, especially what’s going on in the world today with some of the issues with police brutality”, she added, without going into detail.
But she would prefer that people focus on the gold medal rather than her race. “My color just comes with the territory”.
Canada now faces Britain on Saturday morning with a shot at the gold-medal final on the line, while the USA will line up against Australia.
“I’m super glad with the fact that I can be an inspiration for others and hopefully diversify the sport”. “I haven’t really gotten a chance to take everything in, but that’s OK because I want to do well in the rest of my events this week”.
“To me, this win shows that black people are resilient and soar through adversity”, she wrote in an email. She said she picked the university for its values.
Manuel was not intimidated.
That was the first double gold in Olympic swimming and it came after the timing was reduced from a thousandth of a second to a hundredth following a controversial dead-heat in the 1972 men’s 400 individual medley.
On Sunday, she won a silver medal in the butterfly..
Instead, it was Manuel who touched at the same time as 16-year-old Oleksiak, the youngest swimmer in the field. But she did not want to play basketball – ironically, because she is tall.
Their parents made sure that all three kids knew how to swim, and in the pool, Simone found her element.
Nevertheless, she was all smiles as she walked out of the Olympic Aquatics Stadium pool.
Oleksiak and Manuel also tied for a new Olympic record, going 0.01 faster than Campbell did last night in the semis.
“Then my husband saw Olympic record and saw she had gotten first”, Sharron told The Associated Press by phone Friday. A FINA official confirmed that Manuel is the first African American woman to win Olympic gold in an individual event.
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Instead of “gold medal winning, history-making athlete and African American woman”, Manuel became just some “African-American” who happened to be there when Michael Phelps won yet another medal. In addition to the tie in 1984, Anthony Ervin and Gary Hall, Jr., tied for gold in the 50 free at the 2000 Games.
