Filipino American Olympics Diver Remembered
Photos from Life Magazine archives
From the New York Times, an obituary of Victoria Manalo Draves:
Victoria Manalo Draves, an Asian-American diver who overcame ethnic prejudice early in her career to become the first woman to win springboard and platform gold medals in the same Olympics, in 1948, died on April 11 in Palm Springs, Calif. She was 85.
Vicki Manalo was the daughter of a Filipino father and an English mother, in a society in which mixed marriages were generally frowned on. When she was 17, she sought to join the Fairmont Hotel Swimming and Diving Club in San Francisco. As she told The San Francisco Chronicle in 2005, the club’s coach, Phil Patterson, told her that because of her Filipino name she could not join the club.
In a 1991 interview which included her husband Lyle Draves, she described her early family life, her training, and the 1948 London Olympics:
I
really didn’t have a clue about the Olympic Games. I can remember all the teams as we arrived at the stadium. You just feel like this one little tiny member of a huge gathering of all these wonderful athletes from all over the world. It is one of the few times that a woman was able to have a real patriotic feeling. It is such a different experience. It is just magnificent. Something you just hold in your heart and you just never forget, no matter how long ago it was.
