On August 11, 2016, history was made in the pool during the Olympic Games in Rio. A twenty year old African-American woman from Houston,Texas named Simone Manuel was awarded the gold medal in the Women's four hundred meter freestyle race in swimming and a silver medal in the Women's four by one hundred relay race. The race that stood out the most to me and everyone who watched this occurrence was the individual race. During the last one hundred meters of the race, Simone defeated currently 2016 Rio bronze medalist Sarah Sjostrom of Sweden and tied for first with Canada's Penny Oleksiak.

Despite the tie, Manuel became the first African-American to medal in any category in Olympic swimming competitions. Along with that win, she broke the Olympic record with 52.70 seconds. This is a major breakthrough for African-American athletes because it is rare that people see or hear someone from an African descendant that swims competitively. Anatomically speaking, African-Americans' shoulders are heavier than Caucasians. This prohibits the amount of endurance he or she has when competing in an individual race. In this case, a four hundred meter freestyle race. When she was interviewed for NBC, she described the struggles she had to endure in order to get to this point in her life, and continues to have the drive to compete in more Olympic individual swimming events in Tokyo, Japan in 2020.

While watching this competition, I felt emotions course through my veins and it motivated me to train harder for fencing, and become one of the few African-Americans to win a gold medal in individual foil fencing in local, out of state, or in the Olympic Games. She should also inspire African-Americans that whenever they have a vision and work hard at the sport, they can achieve their dreams. They can also be inspired by doing a different sport that a few or no other African-American has ever attempted to be successful in. Simone Manuel has set the bar for African-American swimmers and African-Americans in general who were watching the Olympics that night, and I hope she continues to inspire swimmers throughout her Olympic career.