While Americans and many sports fans around the world celebrate gymnast Sunisa Lee winning the gold medal in the all round event in Tokyo, how many know the story of the first two Asian American athletes to win gold at an Olympic Games?
Victoria Manalo was born in San Francisco on New Years eve in 1924. Her father was a Philippine chef and musician, Teofilo Manalo. He had met and married her mother Gertrude Taylor who was an English maid in San Francisco. Victoria had a twin sister Connie, an older sister Frankie, and a younger brother, Sonny, who unfortunately died as a child.
The family were far from wealthy and could not afford for the children to have swimming lessons. At the age of ten Victoria took summer swimming lessons from the Red Cross, paying five cents for admission to a pool in the Mission District of San Francisco.
She graduated from Commerce High School in 1942 and straight away went to work in a temporary civil service job in the Army Port Surgeon’s office. Her wages contributing to the family’s income.
It was not until she was sixteen years old that she was introduced to diving by Jack Lavery. Lavery after realising that she had a talent for the sport introduced her to Phil Patterson, the swimming coach of the Fairmont Hotel Swimming and Diving Club. However due to racial discrimination and prejudice being a Filipino there were objections to her joining. So Victoria took her mothers maiden name of Taylor in order to be accepted into Patterson’s school. Not long after Patterson left to serve his country in World War II. This meant that Vicki, as she was best known. did not dive for a year as a result of the war.
She found a job at the Presidio military base and later joined the swimming program at the Crystal Plunge in North Beach which was headed by Charlie Sava. Jimmy Hughes was appointed her coach. Every day after school she would complete 50–100 dives. This continued even when she enrolled at San Francisco Junior College (now City College of San Francisco).
At age 19, Vicki finished third in her first national AAU diving competition at the Indiana national meet of 1943.
The following year at the 1944 national AAU championships, she met and became friends with the men’s 1942 platform champion, Sammy Lee. He introduced Vicki to his coaching friend, Lyle Draves. Draves ran the swimming and diving program at the prestigious Athens Athletic Club in Oakland.
Vicki started training with Lyle Draves, and added platform diving to her springboard diving repertoire. However Lyle Draves was disgusted by the racisim he witnessed at the Fairomont Hotel Swimming and Diving Club and left San Francisco Bay for Los Angeles. Vicki then opted to commute to Los Angeles for her coaching, and placed second and third at the Outdoor Nationals. Although by now there was a question as to whether the commute was down to her love of diving or her love for Lyle.
Her father passed away in 1945 and once the war was over Vicki moved to Southern California for good. She married Lyle Draves on July 12, 1946. She then went on to win the National Tower Diving Championship (10 metre platform), in 1946, 1947 and 1948. Vicki Draves won a total of five United States diving championships up to 1948. The first Olympic Games after the War were to take place in London in 1948, and despite not finishing first in either springboard or platform events at the Olympic trials in Detroit, Vicki made the team.
On August 3rd 1948, she won the gold medal in the springboard at the London Olympics. She followed up that win with the gold medal in the 10-metre platform on August 6th becoming the first woman to win both titles, and the first Asian American to win a Gold medal at an Olympic Games.
Two days after her Gold medal victory in the springboard the man who had befriended her at the 1944 AAU Championships and had introduced her to her husband would also win gold. Sammy Lee earned a bronze medal in the 3-metre springboard and then two days after Vicki won he took a gold medal in 10-metre platform diving event. He became the second Asian American to earn a gold medal.
His story too is not a good reflection on the America of the time. Sammy was born on 1st August 1920. His parents were Korean migrants. His father was fluent in English and Korean, and tutored in French. He had graduated with a degree in civil engineering from Occidental College, and opened a chop suey restaurant and market.
As a twelve-year-old living near Los Angeles in 1932, Sammy was inspired by the Olympic Games being hosted by that city. He soon found that he could do somersaults better than all of his friends, and in later life claimed that this is what inspired him to aspire to become an Olympic champion in diving.
However it would not be easy. The family moved to an area of Los Angeles known as Highlands Park. The nearest swimming pool was Brookside Park Plunge in Pasadena. Asians, Latinos and African Americans were only allowed to use the pool on Wednesdays. This was referred to as “international day.” The reason that they were allowed into the pool on a Wednesday was because the next day the the pool was scheduled to be drained and refilled with clean water!
This rule limited Sammy’s opportunities to practice. His coach found a solution. He came around to Sammy’s house and personally dug a pit in his backyard and filled it with sand, allowing Sammy to practice his somersaults and land in sand rather than water.
After leaving Franklin High School Sammy was a student-athlete at Occidental, where he received his undergraduate degree before attending the University of Southern California School of Medicine. He received his Medical degree in 1947. Following this he joined the Army Reserve to help pay for his medical school tuition.
Sammy was coached by renowned diving coach Jim Ryan, and the pair went on to win the United States National Diving Championships in 1942 in both the 3-metre springboard and the 10-metre platform events. This victory made Sammy the first person of colour to capture the United States national championship in diving. He then would be pipped by just two days to becoming the first Asian American to win an Olympic Gold medal, but he was one of the first poolside to congratulate Vicki Draves.
Sammy remained in the army, and by the time 1952 came around he was a Major in the United States Army Medical Corps. He was expecting to be sent to Korea. The US Army decided instead to send him to compete in the Olympic Games. He was however told “but you better win.”. He did. He won the gold medal in the 10-metre platform competition in Helsinki. He did eventually serve in Korea from 1953 to 1955.
Despite his Olympic and career success racism would raise its ugly head again in Sammy’s life. In 1954 he attempted to buy a house in Garden Grove, California, only to be told that he couldn’t. Nearby residents had gathered a petition of signatures to “disallow” or discourage him from buying in “their” neighborhood. A petition was started to counter the original one, but the initial one had been successful and Sammy and his family looked elsewhere for a home.
He would practice as an ear, nose and throat specialist until his retirement in 1990. He would also pass on his knowledge in diving. He helped coach two-time Olympic diving gold medalist Bob Webster. He also later coached another Olympic diving Gold medallist Greg Louganis, who lived with Lee’s family before winning a silver medal in platform diving at the 1976 Olympics at the age of 16.
He was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1968, and into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame in 1990.
Sammy Lee Square, was named in his honour in 2010 and is at the corner of Olympic Boulevard and Normandie Avenue in Los Angeles’ Koreatown, The Los Angeles Unified School District honoured Sammy by renaming Central Region Elementary School #20 as the Dr. Sammy Lee Medical and Health Sciences Magnet School in 2013.
Lee died from complications of pneumonia on December 2, 2016 at his home in Newport Beach, California, aged 96.
As for Vicki Draves, after her victory her and her husband visited the Philippines for the first time upon the invitation from the Manila United States Junior Chamber. The 29-day visit saw them visit her father’s relatives in Orani, Bataan, where he was born. She also gave platform diving exhibitions at the Rizal Stadium and in other Philippine venues, and even one for Philippine president Elpidio Quirino.
Back in the USA Vicki appeared in a Life magazine layout in 1949 after being named one of the magazine’s top two U.S. athletes at the 1948 Olympics.
Vicki then opted to turn professional joining Larry Crosby’s “Rhapsody in Swimtime” aquatic show in 1948. She also performed in the L.A. Coliseum with the superstar Esther Williams, and she toured the U.S., Canada, and Europe with Buster Crabbe’s “Aqua Parade.”
The Draves’ started a family in the 1950’s and also operated a swimming and diving training program at Indian Springs in Montrose. They later moved the program to Encino. The couple raised four sons, who not surprisingly also became skilled divers. She later worked as a secretary while her husband continued to coach.
In the mid-1960s, Vicki was an advocate for the Filipino Education Centre when the second wave of Filipino immigrants came to America.
Vicki Draves was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1969. In October 2006, a two-acre park (one acre per gold medal) in San Francisco was named the Victoria Manalo Draves Park in her honour. The park was on the same site, that she attended the Franklin Elementary School, and is just four blocks away from where she was born and raised.
She and her husband moved to Palm Springs, California in 1995. It was here that she passed away on April 11, 2010, aged 85, from pancreatic cancer aggravated by pneumonia.
Her achievement as the first Asian American to win a Gold Medal at the Olympic Games was acknowledged with a Google Doodle on August 3rd 2020 when the Tokyo Olympics were due to take place. A year on she and Sammy Lee should be remembered, as they opened up the opportunities for those who have followed. They were the ones who broke down the barriers and helped start a change in attitude towards Asian Americans.
