Victoria Manalo Draves, Asian American Olympian, 1st woman to win 2 gold
Victoria Manalo was the first woman in history to win two gold medals in diving. She was also the first Asian American female to win gold and first Asian American Olympian. She faced racial discrimination due to her background, Filipino and English American due to segregation and WWII’s Anti-Pacific Sentiments.
She did not let those moments stop her from her passion where she would go to university, work and then train till late doing 150 dives a day.
Victoria did this to honor her father’s Filipino heritage and name, the name she was asked to change from “Manalo” to “Taylor” to compete. One day her father was not allowed to watch her dive-she got out of the pool and refused to dive until he was allowed in.
From then she was known as which in Tagalog (Filipino) means to “win.”
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