Top 20 Most Significant Swimming Stories Of 2016: #7 – The Colour Is Gold, Olympic Gold

Merry Christmas and peace to all our readers around the world

SwimVortex continues a countdown of the most significant swimming stories of Olympic Year 2016.

Our series so far:

8: Bob Bowman’s Golden Rules 9: The slow burn of Sarah Sjostrom and coaches 10: Mireia, Fred & The Alchemy Of If To When 11: Gregorio The Great 30-Lapper 12: Putting the Great Back Into Britain 13: Masters, Servants & Subsidies – a model of governance that has had its day 14: The ruinous nature of runes in an Olympic year 15: Custodians in Crisis: FINA – Same As It Ever Was 16: The Australia/ China interface highlights questions of faith & fair dinkum 17:  Schools Out; Schooling’s In: aspiration, inspiration and the impact of Michael Phelps 18. The Swimming Selfie 19. The Canadian Comeback  20. On Hosszu Heights

Today, American sprinters Anthony Ervin and Simone Manuel, respectively the Olympic 50m freestyle champion 16 years after he first claimed that title and the Olympic 100m freestyle champion who in 2016 became the first black athlete among women – in U.S. parlance, African-American – to claim an Olympic swimming title.

This entry makes our list this Christmas day in hope that one day we will open the gifts referred to in the quotes of both swimmers, Ervin back in his youth, Manuel this year. Summed up here: “I would like there to be a day when there are more of us and it’s not ‘Simone, the black swimmer’.” Hallelujah to that.

Swimming is overwhelmingly a white sport. Cullen Jones, right, and others have done tremendous work through USA Swimming and the USA Swimming Foundation. Saving Lives Through Making A Splash is a program backed by Phillips 66 and designed “to educate parents, children, educators and communities about the importance of learning to swim and being safe around the water.”

It has a particular poignancy in the black and ethic moniroty communities where swimming may not be high on the list of things to do – but drowning is up there on the list of “avoidable deaths” in numbers that ought not to be and need not be.

Born in the Bronx borough of New York City, Jones learned to swim after he was rescued from a near-drowning at a splash-down pool at Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom in Pennsylvania when he was five years old. So states his Wikipedia entry. No mention of the Splash Tour and the benefits that can flow. A pity.

Claims of institutional racism in the United States at a time when the nation’s first black president is about to move on and dark tones of racism rear their head on the coat-tails of populism and regime change, sport, like music and other realms, can be a role model of how the world can be: human potential and achievement knows no colour.

Today, we celebrate two fine athletes and pray we see the day when that is where the first full stop meets the telling of their stories of success.

No7 – The Colour Is Gold – Olympic Gold

When teenager Anthony Ervin shared gold with teammate Gary Hall Jnr. in the 50m freestyle at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, it looked like the start of a new era. Here was the heir to Hall in the American ranks. A year on, Ervin claimed the world titles over 50 and 100m freestyle ahead of Pieter van den Hoogenband, the Flying Dutchman who was the 100-200 force of the day and remains one of the sprint greats.

Come Athens 2004, it was Hall, however, who was ready to retain the dash title and Hoogie the 100m, no American making the two-lap final and Ervin on his way to a different life.

One of the lines and headlines you will not have read in all of those stories is clear: “White American sprinter Gary Hall Jnr. Keep the Crown” and so on and so forth. To have done so would have been bizarre and would surely have sparked a heated debate. And yet, we did read a fair amount about the background and ethnicity of Ervin.

Born of a three-quarters African-American father and a white Jewish mother, Ervin said at the time that such labels of ethnicity “belittle who I am”. He added:

“I’m proud to be black. I’m proud of my Jewish heritage. I’m proud of everything that  makes me who I am. All of that makes me a unique person, just like anyone else.”

I commend to you this Christmas Chasing Water: Elegy of an Olympian by Ervin if you want to know some of the reasons why Ervin’s words stack up in his life.

Simone Manuel – by PBK

Gold counts – and so does colour when it really oughtn’t to matter at all.

As I wrote in Rio, one fine day … the colour may not matter but it does now and in a way Simone Manuel intends to take as a positive even though she would prefer it if her colour were not the constant hook on which her story was pegged: “Yeah,” she said at the Olympic press conference in Rio after claiming joint gold with Canadian teenager Penny Oleksiak in the 100m freestyle.

“That is something I have definitely struggled with a lot. Just coming in to this race tonight I tried to take the weight of the black community off my shoulders as it is something I carry with me being in this position. But I do hope it kind of goes away.

“I am super glad with the fact I can be an inspiration to others and hopefully diversify the sport, but at the same time I would like there to be a day when there are more of us and it’s not ‘Simone, the black swimmer’.”

“The title ‘black swimmer’ makes it seem like I am not supposed to be able to win a gold medal, I am not supposed to be able to break the Olympic record, and that is not true as I work as hard as anybody else and I love the sport and I want to win, just like everybody else.”

There it is, now in black and white. A line spent and part of history but the inspiration is only just beginning.

On being the first African-American woman to win Olympic solo gold, Manuel said:

“It means a lot to me. This medal is not just for me, it’s for some of the African-Americans who have come before me and been an inspiration. I hope I can be an inspiration to others so this medal is for those who come behind me and get into the sport and hopefully find the love and drive to get to this point.”

She noted the path beaten by the likes of Cullen Jones and Maritza Correia, pioneers in terms of their colour and status as world-class elite USA teamsters, and was then asked about her friendship with artistic gymnastics champion Simone Biles:

“Simone Biles and I are practically the same person. She is super cool. I met her about a year ago. We hung out a couple of times and I am very happy for how she has done. We both bring gold medals back to Houston, Texas.”

The questions then took a touch of agenda when Manuel was asked if her victory could help to deliver a message of tolerance and diversity. She replied: “Yeah, it means a lot especially with what is going on in the world today. Some of the issues with police brutality. This win kind of brings hope and change to some of the issues that are going on in the world.

“I went out there and swam as fast as I could and my colour just comes with the territory.”

From the Archive – Rio 2016 Olympic Games

Rio 2016

Olympic Games

Women’s 100m Freestyle

Shared gold – Simone Manuel and Penny Oleksiak – by Patrick B. Kraemer

It will go down as one of the greatest upsets in Olympic swimming history, Craig Lord writes. The Rio women’s 100m freestyle final will also make the book of history for several other reasons:

the first tie since 1984; African-American Simone Manuel the first black Olympic swimming champion among women in history, 40 years after Dutchwoman Edith Brigitha was denied the honour by the GDR’s State Plan 14:25; Penny Oleksiak, at 16 and 2 months not quite the youngest 100m freestyle champion in history but the first Canadian ever to win four solo medals in the pool at a single Games (Sandra Nielson was 16 years and 9 days when she claimed Munich 1972 gold) bronze to Sweden’s Sarah Sjostrom, whose 52.99 finish made this the first 100m final where the medals took a sub 52.99. Sjostrom becomes the most decorated Swedish woman at a single Games with one orb of each colour

Just four years after 53 flat took the crown, the sub-53 podium was the least susprising aspect of a race that found no room for the lukewarm: by the close, anything that wasn’t shock and searing joy was shock and searing sorrow.

Thrilling. But not if you happen to be Australian – and even if you’re not, hard not to feel the heartbreak of history bleeding away so mercilessly that it could do for the entire Dolphins mission here in Rio if they don’t find a way of getting back up from the knockout blow that rained in on Cate Campbell‘s masterpiece of a stroke with about 25m to go.

Nervous energy, like a door left open for a thief to walk in and do his worst, is a killer. So it proved for Campbell tonight a little over a month since she sent shockwaves through the world sprint sorority with a 52.06 world record.

This one could not be lost. And yet it was. This one was likely to see sisters, Cate joined by Bronte, share a podium for the first time in history. And yet it didn’t.

Cate and …

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