Asian Americans First Won Olympic Gold 60 Years Ago

Asian Americans First Won Olympic Gold 60 Years Ago
Sammy Lee and Victoria Manalo-Draves were pioneers in diving in 1948

In 1948, Victoria Manalo-Draves was the first Asian-American woman to win an Olympic gold medal, earning two in diving. (© AP Images)
By Melody MerinSpecial Correspondent
Washington -- Sixty years ago, Sammy Lee and Victoria Manalo-Draves became the first Asian-American athletes to win gold medals at the Summer Olympics. Overcoming discrimination to train and compete, the two paved the way for the many Asian-American Olympic athletes who would follow.
As the third-largest minority group -- and the second-fastest-growing group -- in the United States, Asians comprise 5 percent of the U.S. population, with about 15 million claiming Asian or Pacific ancestry, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
SAMMY LEE
Born in Fresno, California, in 1920, Sammy Lee was the son of Korean immigrants who settled in Hawaii in 1905.
In the children’s book Sixteen Years in Sixteen Seconds: The Sammy Lee Story, author Paula Yoo writes about 12-year-old Lee’s devotion to diving and the 16 years of hard work it took for him to get to the Olympics. He did this despite strict pool rules imposed on people of color and his father’s wishes that he forget diving and become a doctor. The book comes to a dramatic conclusion with the 16-second, three-and-a-half-somersault dive that made Lee an Olympic champion.
In a 2006 interview with the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, a small California newspaper, Lee recalled the pool in Pasadena, California, where he trained in the 1930s. “People of color could use the Brookside Park pool one day a week,” he said. “That night, it had to be emptied and they had to fill it with fresh water.”
A diving coach who recognized Lee’s talents worked with him to develop Lee’s leg muscles by having him jump into a pit filled with sand. In 1942, Lee earned a spot on the U.S. National Diving Team.
Lee’s father continued to urge him to focus on his studies, and in 1947 Lee received his medical degree from the University of Southern California School of Medicine. A year later, his undeniable skills took him to the Summer Olympics in London, where he earned a gold medal in platform diving and a bronze on the springboard. In Helsinki in 1952, Lee won gold in the platform competition, becoming the first male athlete to win two gold medals in that event.
Lee’s achievements continued far beyond sports. He served during World War II and Korea in the U.S. Army Medical Corps. While in Korea in 1953, Lee was awarded the James E. Sullivan Award as top amateur athlete in the United States. After retiring from competitive diving, he coached the 1960 U.S. Olympic team and also trained future gold medalists Bob Webster and Greg Louganis.

Sammy Lee at the Empire Pool in Wembley, England, where he won the 1948 Olympic tower diving competition (© AP Images)
VICTORIA MANALO-DRAVES
Victoria Manalo-Draves, now 83, also faced discrimination when she took up the sport of diving. Her swimming coach, Phil Patterson, “asked my mother if I could use her maiden name, so for a little while there I was Victoria Taylor instead of Victoria Manalo,” she said in an interview with the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. At the Fairmont Hotel Swimming and Diving Club in San Francisco where she practiced but was denied membership, Manalo also was segregated from white divers.
Born in 1924 in San Francisco to an English immigrant mother and a Filipino immigrant father, Manalo wanted to become a ballet dancer. Her family did not have the money to encourage those dreams, so she turned to swimming and diving in school. In 1944, she began training under diving coach Lyle Draves, who eventually became her husband.
Like Lee, her contemporary and eventually her friend and mentor, Manalo-Draves was part of the U.S. National Diving Team. She won several national championships in platform and springboard diving. In 1948, Manalo-Draves joined Lee in making history by winning gold medals in platform and springboard competitions at the London Olympic Games. She was the first woman to win two diving gold medals in the same Olympic Games, and also the first Asian-American woman to win a medal in the Games. In 2005, a park in San Francisco was named after her.
FOLLOWING IN THEIR FOOTSTEPS
Many other Asian Americans have followed the trail blazed by Lee and Manalo-Draves.
In 1984, Samoan-American Greg Louganis, coached by Lee, became the first man in 56 years to win Olympic springboard and platform diving titles at the same Olympics. Japanese-American Tomia “Tommy” T. Kono, a three-time Olympic medalist in weightlifting (two of them gold), was inducted, along with Lee, into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame in 1990.
There are many others, such as Ford Konno, a Japanese American gold medalist in swimming in 1952; Amy Chow, a Chinese American who helped lead her team to the first-ever American gymnastics team gold in 1996; and Natalie Coughlin, a Filipina American, who won five Olympic medals in individual and team swimming events in 2004.
In the Winter Olympics, Kristi Yamaguchi, a Japanese American, won the gold medal in women’s figure skating in 1992. Figure skater Michelle Kwan, a Chinese American, is an Olympic medalist and the most decorated figure skater in U.S. history.
The contributions of Asian Americans to U.S. society are recognized every May during Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month.
See Sports and 2008 Olympics. Also see Diversity.