Day 8: Simone Manuel

Who said Black people can’t swim?

That tired lie dissolves the moment Simone “Swimone” Manuel enters the water. With every stroke, she dismantles a myth that has lingered far too long, one rooted not in truth, but in access denied and histories erased. Manuel doesn’t just swim; she corrects the record.

At the 2016 Rio Olympics, Simone Manuel made history in a pool that had never made space for someone like her. She won two gold medals and two silvers, but it was the 100-meter freestyle that shifted everything. Tying with Canada’s Penny Oleksiak, Manuel became the first Black American woman to win an individual Olympic gold medal in swimming, setting both Olympic and American records in the process.

Her dominance didn’t appear overnight. At Stanford, Manuel rewrote the record books, breaking school, NCAA, and American records as a freshman and becoming a six-time individual NCAA champion in the 50- and 100-yard freestyle. She helped lead Stanford to back-to-back NCAA team championships and capped her collegiate career by winning the Honda Sports Award and the Honda Cup, recognizing her as the nation’s top female collegiate athlete across all sports. Excellence followed her wherever the water went.

Even when the Tokyo 2020 Olympics tested her physically and mentally, Manuel returned to the podium, earning bronze as the anchor of the U.S. 4×100-meter freestyle relay.

But Simone Manuel’s legacy stretches beyond medals. Through the Simone Manuel Foundation, she confronts the deeper roots of that old myth. She is working to expand swim readiness, water safety, and access for BIPOC youth. She understands that the issue was never ability. It was opportunity.

Simone Manuel didn’t just prove that Black people can swim. She proved how much the sport had been missing by keeping so many out.

Black History 365

This is incredible. Don’t even think incredible is the right word but it’s all I can think of. I love this. Wow.

July 27, 2024

By Kevin Baxter

(Los Angeles Times) — When Maritza Correia McClendon started swimming in Puerto Rico, she stood out because of her talent, not the color of her skin.

“There’s a lot of diversity in Puerto Rico,” said McClendon, who is Black and Latino, as are one in five people on the island.

Then her Guyanese-born parents moved to Florida when she was 8. Though she had become even faster in the pool, that was no longer the first thing people noticed about her.

“I remember a parent telling me, ‘What are you doing here? You should go do track or you should go on a basketball court,’” she said. “They were almost shaming me for being that outcast on that pool deck.

“That is definitely traumatizing. It’s still hard for me. I do definitely still struggle with that confidence factor.”

McClendon overcame that to become the first Puerto Rican of African descent to make the U.S. Olympic swimming team, the first Black female to win an Olympic medal for the U.S. and the first Black American swimmer to hold a world record.

In an effort to get others to follow her lead, McClendon is now among a growing number of former swimmers, coaches, officials and administrators working to make the sport more accessible and welcoming for people of color, from the grassroots level, where she was once shunned, to the Olympic team, where she shined.