Remembering Victoria Manalo Draves -- the first Asian American woman to win gold at the Olympics
Photo: International Swimming Hall of Fame
75 years ago this month, Victoria “Vicki” Manalo Draves took home gold medals in the 3-meter springboard and the 10-meter platform at the 1948 Olympic Games in London. This made Vicki the first woman to sweep the diving events, the first Asian American woman to win any Olympic medal, AND the first Asian American to win an Olympic gold medal, according to the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Museum.
Vicki was born to a Filipino father and an English mother in San Francisco. Vicki endured intense racial discrimination because of her Asian heritage. Interracial marriage was heavily frowned upon, and public pools were segregated. People of color were only allowed to swim for a short period one day a week.
Vicki had hoped to join the Fairmont Hotel Swimming and Diving Club but wasn’t allowed to because of her race. She eventually joined a different club but was forced to use her mother’s maiden name (Taylor) in an effort to hide her racial identity. “I don’t know how my dad felt,” Draves was quoted as saying in 1991, “because he never said anything.”
Vicki was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1969. Much later, in 2006, a two-acre park in San Francisco was named the Victoria Manalo Draves Park in her honor.
One might say that Vicki was always destined for greatness. Victoria is the Latin word for “victory” and in Tagalog, Manolo means “to win.”
The Olympic icon passed away in 2010 at the age of 85 due to complications from pancreatic cancer but her legacy lives on.
