Category Archive: Gender

Galen Rupp Wins the Chicago Marathon: How Let’sRun.com Politicized Race and Running

Galen Rupp
Galen Rupp wins the 2017 Chicago Marathon

When Galen Rupp won the Chicago Marathon on October 8, 2017, he ran a personal best of 2:09:20, edging out the 2016 champion, Abel Kirui, by 28 seconds.

Congratulations Galen Rupp! A three-time Olympian, Rupp won silver in the 10K at the London Olympics, and bronze in the marathon at the Rio Olympics.

But after the Chicago Marathon, the popular runner’s publication, Let’s Run, gave Rupp a new distinction in the article celebrating his victory – “1st American-Born Winner in 35 Years.” Let’s Run’s Facebook followers picked up on the politically nuanced headline and reacted not only to the inaccuracies, but the racial and gender overtones:

  • MDW: Khalid Khannouchi may not have been born in the US, but he was, when he won, and is still American. He won in 2000 and 2002. Don’t discredit his wins as an American
  • JP: Well said. The title sounds like a trump supporter.
  • MDW: No, just a typical Letsrun or FloTrack headline. Misleading.
  • SL: Not just misleading but incorrect. First American born MALE to win in 35 years.
  • MDW: Even better!
  • JP: “First American Born God Fearing White Male Winner of Chicago Marathon Crushes Darker Skinned Heathens from Other Side of Wall!” There. I fixed it.
  • MDW: Not funny.
  • JP: Lighten up. It’s the internet.

Lets Run Galen Rupp Headline

The last American to win the Chicago Marathon, as pointed out by MDW in the Facebook post, is Khalid Khannouchi, who in fact, has won the Chicago Marathon four times, twice in 1997 and 1999 as a Moroccan, and twice in 2000 and 2002 as an American. Khannouchi became a naturalized citizen of the United States on May 2, 2000.

Like my grandfather who became a naturalized citizen in the 1950s and my mother who became a naturalized citizen in the 1960s, Khannouchi is an American citizen. The Let’sRun.com headline for Rupp’s victory could have been “1st Male American Winner in 35 Years,” but the editors made a conscious decision to politicize their headline. In the article they provide further explanation of why they think this accomplishment is significant:

While Khalid Khannouchi and Meb Keflezighi have delivered plenty of incredible performances for the U.S., a win of this magnitude by a non-African-born American has been a long time coming, and it’s never happened during the current era of Kenyan/Ethiopian dominance. Rupp’s win wasn’t just big for the U.S.; it was big for the rest of the world, as well. It had been almost nine years since a man born outside of Africa had won a World Marathon Major (Marilson Gomes dos Santos in New York in 2008). Rupp’s win today was a breakthrough, but it remains to be seen whether he is a generational talent or if his win can open the doors for other non-Africans to contend on the sport’s biggest stages. If we had to choose right now, we’d lean toward the “generational talent” explanation.

Martin Fritz Huber, who writes on running in OusideonLine.com, wrote this counter-point article entitled “We Shouldn’t Care Where a Runner is Born.”

On the one hand, this can be read as an innocuous acknowledgement of (East) African dominance in distance running; for a stark example of the latter, check out this comprehensive list of the fastest marathons ever run. More problematically, one could argue that creating an African-born vs. non-African-born binary imposes racial categories, and, needless to say, the historical precedents here are not good. To put matters in these terms also addresses distance running’s perpetual elephant in the room: whether or not, and to what degree, race and/or ethnicity signifies a “natural” competitive advantage.

Khalid Khannouchi

To me, this controversy smacks of the birther debate during Barak Obama’s tenure as president, when loud voices continued (continue) to claim that Obama was not born in the United States. The whole point about sports is that the best person wins, and the whole point about the American Dream, is that “all men are created equal” with the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” through hard work and lack of barriers.

My grandfather emigrated from Japan to the United States in 1903, and helped build a strong community in Japan Town in San Francisco through his work as an elder in the Japanese Church of Christ and executive director of the Japanese YMCA. While he had to wait until the 1950s to become a naturalized American citizen, he helped countless others become solid American citizens. He was as American as they come, and I would hate to see an asterisk indicating that his contributions were less so because he was not born in the United States.

He, as much as Khannouchi, has made America great.

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P&G’s Newest Thank You Mom Commercial: Promoting Tolerance and Inclusion in a Period of Growing Intolerance and Exclusion

Girl skiier_love over bias

P&G’s long-running series of “Thank You Mom” commercials have been a powerful testament to the importance of the love and support of parents, particularly mothers. The global consumer goods company has worked hard to make the connection to caring mothers and their brand, and have leveraged sports stories during Olympic cycles to send particularly emotional messages.

Their most recent commercial, “Love Over Bias,” has – at least to me – a more intense resonance.

These are divisive times, with tensions emerging out of the economic dislocations that have slammed the middle classes in developed economies all over the world. The tensions have at times, in my view, manifested themselves in balder declarations of intolerance, in angrier expressions of victimization, and more frequent impulses to violence.

Ooh child, things are going to get easier

Ooh child things will get brighter

Love Over Bias

The message is that children at times suffer unnecessarily from bias, whether they are black with hopes of making it in a sport dominated by whites, or boys in a sport where boys’ sexuality are questioned, or children who have not compete with those who have, or girls of Islamic faith whose hibabs become emotional lightning rods, or disabled children who simply want a chance.

“Imagine if the world could see what a mom sees,” Is the tagline.

The message is universal. And yet…..

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The Ever-Recovering Lindsey Vonn and Her Rules for Resilience

Julia Mancuso, Lindsey Vonn, Elisabeth Gorgi on the Downhill Medal Podium at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics
Julia Mancuso, Lindsey Vonn, Elisabeth Gorgi on the Downhill Medal Podium at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics
All high performance downhill skiers experience injuries and setbacks and American Lindsey Vonn is no exception.

The three-time Olympian and 2010 gold medalist in the downhill, has had more than her share: season-ending knee surgery to repair a torn ACL and broken knee bone in early 2013, re-injury of the ACL later in 2013, which kept her off the slopes for all of 2014, including the Sochi Olympics, a broken ankle in August 2015 followed by a knee fracture three months later, ending her season, and finally a broken arm in November of 2016, which required surgery. She returned to the slopes two months later.

Forbes Magazine recently interviewed Vonn, sensing that her ability to bounce back from adversity time and again features a mindset common to successful entrepreneurs – one complete with a checklist for being resilient. And while high-performance athletes and serial entrepreneurs may appear to push this mindset to levels beyond the average person, there are powerful lessons for us all in this interview. Here is the list of Vonn’s 7 Strategies to Bounce Back From a Setback Even When It Feels Impossible. This is shortened, so go to this link for more:

  1. Prepare: The key to the comeback lies in the consistent, intentional training in advance. Develop personal training routines to keep yourself sharp, strong, and prepared for the next challenge.
  2. Internalize the lesson: If you are feeling stuck, reflect on the lessons hidden in the situation.
  3. Harness pressure to your advantage: Failure can be scary, but Vonn leverages fear to propel herself forward instead of paralyze her progress.
  4. Keep an open mind: Your brain is wired to keep you safe, which is why a setback can trigger stress and strong urge to fight or flee. If you feel stuck and blinded by your current situation, create emotional distance, gain perspective, and see if there are any creative solutions you may have missed.
  5. Define yourself: The story that we tell ourselves becomes who we are. Setbacks can be a catalyst for a new self-narrative that holds you back.
  6. Visualize: During stressful situations, the mind releases cortisol, which inhibits creativity. Practice mindfulness to quiet the mind and imagine a brighter future. Paint the mental picture with crystal clarity.
  7. Keep moving: Approach each situation as an iteration to learn from for the future.

 

Lindsey Vonn
Lindsey Vonn

From a personal and leadership development perspective, there are a number of nuggets of wisdom here: the importance of a development routine to maintain focus, the ability to see ways to improve when you’re doing poorly and when you’re doing well, facing fear and pressure by visualizing the joy and glory of what is possible.

I believe that great leaders, above all else, have an incredible sense of self – one’s strengths, weaknesses, likes and dislikes, and most importantly where one has come from and a clear view of where one wants to go. The more self-aware a person is, the more likely that failure, as she said, will not define you.

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National Geographic October 1964 – Tokyo The Peaceful Explosion Part 3: The Japanese at Play

Nat Geo_The Albion jazz cabaret
Mirror reflects the gaudy glare of a subterranean café on the Ginza. The Albion, a favorite of foreign visitors, features frantic jazz blared over loudspeakers, with house lights that blink eerily to the rhythm. Waitresses in white-satin toreador pants dance, rather than walk, about their chores.

This is part three exploring the words of William Graves, and photos of Winfield Parks, staff of the monthly magazine National Geographic. Graves and Parks spent weeks, if not months in Japan, uncovering the insight that would make Japan in 1964 comprehensible to the West.

In the pictures in this post, Graves and Parks try to help us understand the “leisure boom” of the times, and to show us how Tokyoites played. As (the predominantly male) Western journalists at the time often did, they focused on the night life. Graves tracked down a woman named Reiko, who worked as a hostess at a nightclub called Hanabasha.

In Tokyo nightclub slang, Reiko is what is known as a toranshista garu – “transistor girl” – one who, as the name suggests, is small, compact, and full of energy.

The dance floor resembled the platform at Shinjuku Station in rush hour, so Reikko and I settled for a napkin-sized table in a corner. We talked of Tokyo’s reija boomu – the “leisure boom” – and the city’s fantastic wealth.

“This year, most richest one,” Reiko began. “Japanese call this Year of Tatsu – Year of Dragon. Dragon stand for rich.”

NatGeo_asakusa
Tokyo at play invades Asakusa, a vast neon-trimmed amusement and shopping district that rivals the famed Ginza. Stalls sell everything from cameras to Buddhist funerary images. Advertisement beneath a merchant’s shop sign offers bargains in suits.
Nat Geo_Shichi Go San Cafe Asakusa
Stately chorus line strikes a graceful pose of Shichi-go-san Café in the Asakusa amusement district. Low-priced restaurants in this area serve as an inexpensive substitute for geisha houses, where dinner, rice wine, classical dancing, and song can cost $100 a person. These dancers, who double as waitresses, perform beneath a canopy of artificial maple leaves.
Nat Geo_driving range
Head down, spike heels set, a lunch-hour golfer tees off at the three level driving range in downtown Shiba Park. Tokyo’s fastest-growing sport, gorufu counts fanatics among corporation presidents and salesgirls. Post-war American influence on women extends far beyond fashions and golf links. From voteless status before 1947, Japanese women have risen to fill presidencies of colleges, cabinet posts, and seats in the Diet.
Nat Geo_kids playing in park
Breathtaking leap lifts a Tokyo schoolgirl twice her height on Japan’s high-flying version of the seesaw. Instead of straddling a plank, young enthusiasts grasp the bars and soar in standing position. Like many Japanese, these pupils enjoy freedom from prewar uniforms and taboos against coeducation.
Nat Geo_playing ball on the docks
Start of a mighty swing promises a hit in a dock workers’ lunch-hour game. During spring and summer, noon whistles signal pick-up games in parks, dead-end streets, and eve on rooftops.
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The Recent Evolution of the Sports Bra: How Lisa Lindahl and Brandi Chastain Liberated the Female Athlete

Brandi Chastain Sports Illustrated Cover

It was 1999 and the two premier national teams in women’s soccer were facing off in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena California to determine the champions of the second FIFA World Cup Championship.

The United States and China were locked in a scoreless draw through regular and extra time, with victory coming down to a penalty shootout. After goaltender Briana Scurry stopped a shot in the third round, victory rested in the left foot of Brandi Chastain. And when she rocketed the ball into the upper right hand corner of the net, Chastain immediately ripped off her jersey, fell to her knees, her arms extended in ecstatic triumph, and her black Nike sports bra exposed for the entire world to see.

Lisa Lindahl was at home in Vermont when her phone rang and her friend told her to switch on the TV. Lindahl was an entrepreneur who established the market for sports bras in the late 1970s, so when she saw Chastain raise her arms in victory, she said was astonished, and proud. “It was her confidence, her preparation and her long journey that came to fruition in that moment,” said Lindahl in this 99% invisible podcast. “And that is perfect because I could say that about my journey of the jog bra.”

One of my favorite podcasts, 99% Invisible, is not about sports, but about design. And strange as it may seem today, the sports bra was non-existent before 1977. No sportswear or sports equipment manufacturer ever imagined why women would ever need a sports bra.

Dr. LaJean Lawson, who is the Sports Bra Science and Marketing Consultant to Champion Athleticwear, and has been shaping the design of the sports bra for three decades, said that the environment for women in sports when she was growing up was very different.

When I started high school we weren’t allowed to run full court because there was the assumption that girls were too weak, and we couldn’t run any races longer than 400 meters. So women participating in sports having/needing a sports bra is so recent.

The more Lawson promoted the sports bra and the idea of better fitness for women, she even got hate mail.

This letter said “If God had intended women to run he would not have put breasts on them.” There was a whole socio-cultural stereotype of how women should behave, and it wasn’t vigorously and badly. It was more calm and sweet, and how to comport yourself with more steadiness, and not the sort of enthusiasm and passion you see with sport.

But in the 1970s, circumstances were conspiring in the United States to make it easier for women to participate and compete in sports.

In the United States, a section of the United States Education Amendments of 1972, famously called “Title IX,” was created, and subsequently had a huge impact on American society. While the overall goal was to ban gender discrimination within federally funded schools and universities, encouraging greater access for women to higher education, protecting pregnant women and parenting students from being expelled, and challenging gender stereotypes about whether boys or girls were strong in a particular academic category like math and science, Title IX has had a tremendous impact on women in sports.

According to this article, “the impact of Title IX on women’s sports cannot be overstated: the NCAA says the number of female college athletes is at an all-time high, and the numbers of girls playing high school sports has swelled from fewer than 300,000 in 1974 to more than 3.1 million in 2012.”

Additionally, getting into shape and staying fit became a huge part of the American pop culture in the 1970s and 1980s. With bestselling books like The Complete Book of Running by Jim Fixx, which came out in 1977, and Jane Fonda’s Workout, published in 1981, women were running and working out more.

And the more women ran, the more obvious it became that they had a problem men did not. Here’s what Lindahl had to say about that:

My whole generation started exercising, and I had a friend introduce me to what was then called “jogging”. When you have at-shirt over bouncing nipples, you get chafing. So the answer to that is to put a bra on. Because I did try running without any bra. And then of course I got a lot of comments from passing motorists, and certain male runners. So you wear a bra and that poses problems of different sorts, like the straps that fall off your shoulders so you’re always jigging them back up, hardware can dig into your back, and they’re hot and sweaty.

One day, Lindahl’s sister, who also ran, called to ask this obvious, painfully obvious, question: “‘What do you do about your boobs? I am so uncomfortable when I’m running! Why isn’t there a jock strap for women?’ That’s when we really laughed. We thought that was hilarious.”

Jog Bra ad from 1970s 2

But Lindahl couldn’t get the idea out of her head, and started to think about the ideal bra for female runners – a bra with straps that wouldn’t fall off the shoulders and wide enough so they wouldn’t dig in. Lindahl recruited a friend, Polly Smith, who was a seamstress and costume designer. And they worked through multiple prototypes for this bra, but could not hit upon the design that made it easier for her to run. Then one day, Lindahl’s husband came down the steps with a jock strap not where it was supposed to be – over his head and across his chest – and said playfully, “Hey ladies, here’s your new jock bra!”

The three of them had a great laugh, and Lindahl thought to continue the joke by pulling the jock strap off her husband and putting it on herself….except that when Lindahl put the jock strap over her breast, she had an epiphany. “Oh!”

The next day, Lindahl went running in a contraption that featured two jock straps sewn together, and realized she had a design that would work. Lindahl, Smith and Smith’s assistant, Hinda Schreiber decided to build a business. Schreiber’s father lent them $5000, the team built a relationship with an apparel manufacturer in South Carolina, and by 1978, they were distributing the “Jog Bra.”

Despite the initial reaction of sports retailers, who thought that the jog bra should go in a lingerie department and not in a sporting goods store, sales of the $16 bra took off. Jog Bra had annual sale increases of 25%, and created an entirely new market. More importantly, it enabled women to enjoy their sporting activities more fully and freely, whether it was taking part in a Jane Fonda workout, playing point guard on a high school basketball team, or running a marathon. The sports bra that Lindahl, Smith and Schreiber created liberated a whole generation of women athletes.

That feeling of liberation came to fruition that moment Brandi Chastain ripper off her jersey in 1999. But that vision was in Lindahl’s head in 1977.

It should be modest enough I could take off my t-shirt on really hot summer days because I had a running partner who would do that. He would take off his shirt in the middle of his run, pull it over his head and tuck it in the back of his shorts. I was so jealous because I couldn’t do that.

Today, millions of women can and do, thanks to the Jog Bra. Happy 40th!

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The First Japanese Woman’s Super Star Hideko Maehata Part 2: A Media Sensation in 1936

Hideko Maehata after winning gold in Berlin
Hideko Maehata waving to the crowd after winning gold in Berlin

It was a slight, perhaps. The first and most famous of films about the Olympics – Leni Riefenstahl’s documentary about the 1936 Berlin Olympics, entitled Olympia, did not include the winner of the women’s 200-meter breast stroke. That’s because the winner was a Japanese, Hideko Maehata, who beat out a German named Martha Genenger.

But that’s OK. When Maehata returned to Japan after her gold-medal winning performance in Berlin, she was a national celebrity. Eight other Japanese won gold medals at the Berlin Games, but they may not have gotten the media attention that Maehata did. As Robin Kietlinski explains in her seminal book, Japanese Women and Sport, national radio was bringing the world to all of Japan, led by Nihon Hoso Kyokai, or NHK. Established in 1924, Maehata’s race was one of the first events to be covered live, broadcasted to Japan via satellite.

And according to Kietlinski, they had the man who brought the excitement of the moment alive for Japanese listeners – Kasai Sansei – whose shrieks of excitement and shouts of “Maehata ganbare” brought the swimming stadium of the Imperial Sports Field in Berlin to the homes of people all across Japan. In this NHK documentary, Maehata’s cousin, Tomizo Hase, was asked about his recollections of listening to that famous radio broadcast:

We were all nervous, out palms sweating. We said to each other, we really hope she wins. There were about 10 people inside and many more outside. What a heavenly feeling it was. Some of us cried in joy, saying she’s done great.

In her book, Kietlinski provides a transcript in English of that broadcast. To listen in Japanese and get the sense of excitement Japanese felt in 1936, go to the 25 second mark of the video below.

Maehata and Genenger are side by side. Ah, Maehata pulls ahead! She’s in the lead! She’s a little bit ahead. Fifty meters down. 100 meters down. Fifty meters left to go. Maehata is a little bit ahead! Ah, Genenger is coming. Come on, come on! Maehata is in danger, she’s in danger! Go for it! Maehata go for it!

They turned, the swimmers just now turned and Maehata holds onto a slight lead. C’mon Maehata. Go for it! (Repeated four more times) Forty meters left to go. (Repeated four times) Maehata is ahead! Maehata is ahead! Genenger is coming. It’s just a very small lead by Maehata. Go for it Maehata! (Repeated four times) Twenty-five meters left to go! Maehata’s lead is small, it’s very small! Maehata! Go for it Maehata! (Repeated eleven times)

Maehata is in the lead! (Repeated six times) Five meters left to go! Four meters left! Three meters, two meters. Maehata is ahead! Maehata has won! (Repeated eighteen times) By a small margin Maehata is the champion! Thank you Ms Maehata, the Japanese flag will fly today. Thank you! For the first time in the history of women’s swimming the Japanese flag will fly.

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The First Japanese Woman’s Super Star Hideko Maehata Part 1: Emphatically Lifting the Weight of a Nation Off Her Shoulders

Hideko Maehata on the Podium with Martha Genenger
Hideko Maehata (center) on the Podium with Martha Genenger (right) and Inge Sorensen of Denmark (left)

Hideko Maehata swam 10,000 meters a day. So taking the two-week boat trip from Japan to the West Coast of the United States was a piece of cake for the native of Wakayama, Japan. It was the last 200 meters, in the pool, that were going to be painful.

After winning her heat in the 200-meter breaststroke by nearly 3 seconds, she lined up for the finals. And in a tough-fought nail biter, a 16-year old Australian named Clare Dennis set an Olympic record and edged out Maehata by a tenth of a second.

According to Robin Japanese Women and Sport, in her book Japanese Women and Sport, Maehata was welcomed back home in Japan as a hero, but the 18-year-old, while proud was disappointed. Was it worth training so hard again, and trying again for gold in 1936, or should she put an end to the long hours in the water and get married as society at the time required. Kietlinski explained that Maehata received letters from her fans making both sides of the argument.

According to this NHK mini-documentary of Maehata’s life, it was the Mayor of Tokyo at that time, Hidejiro Nagata. Nagata, proud of Japan’s incredible accomplishments at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics, was putting together his plan for Tokyo to host the 1940 Olympics, met the returning Maehata and insisted that she go for it again in Berlin.

If only you had won that gold medal. It’s so frustrating. Don’t forget the bitter taste of defeat. Let it drive you to do better four years from now at the Berlin Olympics.

And so, Maehata decided to aim for gold and glory at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. She doubled her regimen, swimming 20 kilometers a day, the water hiding the tears of pain. She noted that her victory in LA was denied by such a tiny margin that perfecting her start was essential. She worked on her launch from the starting block by practicing 100 starts a day, her toes bleeding from the wear and tear.

The training was so grueling I cried as I swam. But at those times, I reminded myself that if I failed to overcome the pain, and fall short in Berlin, I would be the laughing stock of Japan.

And so, despite being cheered on by thousands as she boarded the ship for Europe and ultimately Berlin in 1936, she did so with considerable anxiety. In fact, as the NHK video explains, based I believe on what she described in her own autobiography, she found herself alone on the deck of the ship, looking over the waves, thinking that if she did not win, she would jump into the ocean on the return trip and kill herself.

This was the first Olympics in Berlin, otherwise known as the Nazi Olympics as it was presided over by der Führer, Adolph Hitler. The home field advantage for the German athletes was significant, and Maehata’s biggest competitor in the 200-meter breast stroke was a 20-year-old from Krefeld, Germany, Martha Genenger.

Genenger sent the first warning shot, winning her first round heat in 3:02.9 seconds, setting an Olympic record. Maehata fired back in her first round heat with a time one second better, re-setting the Olympic record. In the semi-finals, no records were set, but no other competitor came anywhere close to Genenger’s or Maehata’s times. The finals were to be a showdown between the German and the Japanese.

Hideko Maehata in high schoolIt was 4pm on August 11, 1936. Maehata was in lane 6. Genenger was in lane 7. Even in the early part of the race, Maehata pulled ahead. And for the remainder of the 150 meters, Maehata clung to the lead. When her hand touched the wall, she was not sure who had won.

When I reached the finish line I l gasped for breath and looked across at the next lane and saw that Genenger was already there. And I thought I had lost.

In fact, Maehata had persevered by a mere sixth tenths of a second. She had fulfilled the command of the Mayor of Tokyo. She had realized the dreams of an entire nation.

And she could get on with her life. In 1937, Maehata married a doctor, retiring from swimming. She raised two children, and when she greater flexibility after her children grew up, she started a swimming school in 1967. She saw that after the war, the Japanese were weak in swimming. She felt that she could contribute by focusing on mothers, teaching them the joys of swimming. If mothers understand and enjoy swimming, she believed, so will their children.

Maehata suffered a stroke while teaching, at 68. She was told she would never walk again, which was fuel for her competitive fire. So she pushed herself. “I still have the drive inside,” she said in the NHK documentary. “When I have a tough day, I recall my days as a competitive swimmer, and it’s like someone is yelling at me that I have to be stronger. The fact that I am still alive and active today is thanks to that inner strength.” Amazingly, a year later, Maehata returned to the pool and resumed her coaching duties.

In 1995, at the age of 80, Maehata, one of the most famous sports figures of the early 20th century in Japan, passed away.

Hideko Maehata getting married
Hideko Maehata getting married
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Irena Kirszenstein Szewińska: One of the 20th Century’s Greatest Women Track Stars

Szewińska and her Tokyo medals
Szewińska and her Tokyo medals

In 1964, one of the more powerful track and field teams at the Tokyo Olympics was the team from Poland. Jozef Szmidt won his second straight gold in the triple jump. Andrzej Badenski took bronze in a tough men’s 400-meter competition, and the Polish men from the 100-meters relay team took silver behind the Americans.

The 4×100 women’s relay team did even better, streaking to gold and an (apparent) world record in Tokyo. The women who ran the second leg was Irena Kirszenstein Szewinska. The then-20-year-old from Warsaw was starting a career that would carry her through five consecutive Olympiads. In that period, she captured an amazing total of seven Olympic track and field medals.

In addition to her gold medal in the 100-meter relays and a silver in the 200 meters, she was a silver medalist in the long jump as well. But she was indeed a sprinter at heart, and set 10 world records in the 100 meters, 200 meters and the 400 meter sprints.

At the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, she won her first individual sprinting gold medal in the 200-meter sprint finals in come-from-behind style. Seemingly behind 4 or 5 other runners, when she hit the straightaway, she accelerated and pulled away with ease, as you can see in the video below.

After winning a bronze medal in the 200 meters at the Munich Olympics in 1972, Kirszenstein Szewinska reinvented herself. In 1973, she began competing in the longer 400 meters, and as her IAAF Hall of Fame profile page states, “she quickly proved very adept at the new distance. The following year she became the first woman to break 50 seconds over one lap of the track.”

“My favorite event was the 200 meters because deep down I felt like a sprinter,” she said in this short video on the Polish Olympian. “My heart always belonged to sprint. Nevertheless, I always treated the 400 meters as a long spring, and that’s why I was successful at that distance as well.”

Szewińska 400 meter finals Montreal
Szewińska pulling away in the 400 meter finals at Montreal

In Montreal, at the age of 30, she punished the competition, set a world record, and won her most satisfying gold medal.

“I had been running for 20 years. During that time, there were many important moments. But I suppose the most important moment of all of them was the last gold medal I won at the Montreal Games for the 400 meters.”

One of the greatest women track and field stars of the 20th century, Kirszenstein Szewinska has continued her career in sports as an administrator, including Vice-President (1995-1999) then Executive Board Member (1999-2003) of the World Olympians’ Association (WOA), member of the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) Women’s Committee (1984-2007).

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Vicki Manalo Draves – The First Female Asian American Olympic Champion Part 2: We All Need Role Models

Zoe Ann Olsen, Vicki Draves and Patsy Elsener
American silver, gold and bronze medalists in the springboard finals, Zoe Ann Olsen, Vicki Draves and Patsy Elsener, at the 1948 London Olympics

Vicki Manalo Draves was the most successful member of the US swimming and diving team at the 1948 London Olympics, the only American to win two individual gold medals. She was also the first Asian American woman to be an Olympic champion.

And yet for decades after her amazing achievements in London, Manalo Draves drifted into relative obscurity. Granted, she was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1969. But in her hometown of San Francisco, she had gone virtually unrecognized and unknown for much of her life. In the first half of the 20th century, when Manalo Draves was growing up, she had to deal with the conscious and unconscious bias of the times, as she was the child of a English mother and a Filipino father.

For example, in order to get access to diving facilities at a swimming club in San Francisco, Vicki Manalo was told by her coach to assume her mother’s maiden name, Taylor, which would make the members of the club more comfortable, presumably.

As Rodel Rodis wrote in this article for the Inquirer.net, “if she had represented the Philippines when she won her two gold medals, there would have been parks and schools named after her, and monuments of her erected all over the Philippines to celebrate her inspiring victory.”

Manalo Draves actually got a taste of that kind of adulation when she and her husband/coach, Lyle Draves, visited the Philippines after her gold-medal victories in London, according to this Central City article. They spent a month in both the capitol of Manila and her father’s hometown of Orani, Bataan, where she held diving exhibitions in the day time, and partied in the evenings.

“It was a wonderful experience. And I dived for the president at the palace swimming pool,” said Vicki Draves.

“But they kept us up every night nighclubbing until 3 or 4 in the morning,” said Lyle Draves.

Victoria Manalo Draves Park Plaque
Victoria Manalo Draves Park Plaque

Today, the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame (BASHOF) has not included their double gold medalist from South of Market district (SoMa). But fortunately, before Manalo Draves passed away in 2010, she was honored by the San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission, which approved the naming of a park after the Olympic champion. On October 27, 2006, a 2-acre park in the 1000 block of Folsom was dubbed the Victoria Manalo Draves Park.

“I got some breaks, very much so,” said Manalo Draves in this article. “And I’d say to any young people, if they have dreams to follow them, see them all the way through no matter what it takes. And always be fair and kind.”

My grandfather migrated to San Francisco in 1903 to run the Japanese-American YMCA for many years. My father was born in J-Town in 1929, five years after Vicki Manalo was born. I’d like to think they knew of Vicki Manalo and cheered the exploits of a fellow Asian American from San Francisco, after the trauma the West Coast Japanese Americans faced during World War II.

We all need role models.

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Vicki Manalo Draves – The First Female Asian American Olympic Champion Part 1: Teamed Up with Mentor and Friend Sammy Lee to Become Asia America’s Dynamic Diving Duo of the London Games

Sammy Lee and Vicki Manalo Draves
Sammy Lee and Vicki Manalo Draves

Before there was Pat McCormick, Ingrid Engel-Kramer or Fu Mingxia, there was Vicki Manalo Draves.

At the 1948 London Olympics, the first summer games held since 1936, an abeyance caused by the Second World War, Manalo Draves became the first American woman to win two gold medals in an Olympic Games, as well as the first American woman to win both the springboard and platform diving finals at the Olympics.

Manalo Draves was also the first Asian American woman to win a medal in the Olympics. Born to a mother from England and a father from the Philippines, Manalo Draves grew up in the South-of-Market district of San Francisco. Her mother was a maid at a hotel and he father was a chef and musician on ships and a houseboy for an army colonel in the Presidio, doing all they could just to make ends meet. Certainly there was no money left over for swimming or diving lessons.

But somehow, Manalo Draves was spotted, and asked if she wanted to learn how to dive. And fortunately, she was in California, rich in swimming and diving coaches at the time. So learn she did, from one coach after another. Although not her coach, one of America’s best divers in 1944, Sammy Lee, saw Manalo Draves’ form, and introduced himself. Lee then introduced the young diver to a friend and diving coach, Lyle Draves. Not only did Lyle become Vicki’s coach, he became her life partner, married for over 60 years.

But wife or not, the husband worked the wife hard in training. As explained in this Central City article, she worked during the day as a secretary in San Francisco, and took a train across the bay to the Athens Athletic Club in Oakland where she trained every evening from 7pm to 10pm, making 50 to 100 dives a night. With victories at the US National Championships from 1946 – 48 in platform, as well as a championship in 1948 in springboard, Manalo Draves was building up to be a favorite for a medal in the 1948 London Olympics.

In 1948, Manalo Draves was battling teammate, Zoe Ann Olsen, in the springboard. Going into her last dive, having fallen behind Olsen, Manalo Draves could not talk to her coach, as coaches were forbidden to enter the competition space. Feeling she was unable to perform to her best, and worried that she was not going to nail her last dive – a back one-and-a-half layout – she went up to the only friendly face on the deck – teammate, Sammy Lee. As she wrote in the book, “Tales of Gold,” Lee told her what she needed to hear:

Newlyweds Victoria and Lyle Draves_1946
Newlyweds Victoria and Lyle Draves, 1946, from the book Tales of Gold

I was very worried about the last dive, which was a back one-and-a-half layout, because I had not been hitting it at all in practice. I said to him, “Oh Sam, what am I going to do? This is the dive I have to get.” He told me, “Come on. You didn’t come all this way just to say, “I can’t do it.’ You’ve got to get up there and hit it.”

Hit it she did. And as Manalo Draves won the platform competition going away, she earned two gold medals in London. As for Sammy Lee, he won gold in the platform and bronze in the springboard competition. The first Asian Americans to medal in the Olympics dominated the diving competition at the 1948 London Games. Lee, who would become Dr Sammy Lee, serving in the US Army Medical Corps in South Korea during the Korean War, would be a coach and a friend to some of the greatest divers of the 20th century.

In the case of Manalo Draves, Lee not only introduced Manalo Draves to her husband, he was the one who gave Manalo Draves away at her wedding, as her father had already passed away.

Manalo Draves went on to a career as a swimming entertainer, performing with Buster Crabbe and Esther Williams. And then she stopped, disappearing from the American consciousness for decades.

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