American swimmer Simone Manuel won the gold medal in the women’s 100-meter freestyle Thursday night at the Rio Olympics.
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What truly won the hearts of Canadians was her incredible seventh place comeback during the women’s 100-metre freestyle tied her for gold with US swimmer Simone Manuel. Oleksiak – who along with Ruck were on the 4×100 medal winning foursome – added a silver in the 100 butterfly and Kylie Masse won bronze in 100 backstroke.
Bronte faded to fourth, and Cate dropped all the way to sixth at the finish.
When Simone Manuel woke up Thursday, she was just another Olympic swimmer.
“She wants to be seen as an individual who just like everyone else has worked hard to be where she is”, Sharron Manuel said.
“That helped keep the nerves off me”, Manuel said.
Earlier in the evening Ryan Murphy had won another gold for the United States in the pool, as he came home first in the 200m backstroke.
“It’s definitely been a long journey these past four years, I’m just so blessed to have the gold medal”, Manuel told NBC Sports, fighting off tears.
JaVe Bonner, a pre-med student at George Mason University, said Manuel’s win is significant to her because she was told when she was younger that she couldn’t go into a neighborhood pool since her skin was “dirty”.
She leaned her head into her hands and cried when she recognised her historic achievement.
“I opened the door to the room, and she got up and gave me a hug and said, ‘I wasn’t going to fall asleep until I gave you a hug, ‘ and that really meant a lot to me”, said Manuel, who gave the US a gold medal in the event for the first time since 1984.
Cullen Jones, an Olympic gold medalist in swimming, tweeted, “I am so proud of Simone Manuel”.
Speaking afterwards, Manuel looked forward to a time when the focus would be on sport and not on her race.
Manuel, who attends Stanford and has a brother who played basketball at SMU, was there to pick up the torch for African-American swimmers. It’s for a whole bunch of people that came before me and have been an inspiration to me. “This medal is for the people who come behind me and get into the sport”. She now attends Stanford University.
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“I will just remember all the memories I made”. Biles’ parents said that the comments bothered her.
