Victoria Manalo Draves

Athlete

• Born: December 31, 1924
• Birthplace: San Francisco, California
• Died: April 11, 2010
• Place of death: Palm Springs, California

Victoria Manalo Draves was a Filipino American diver and became the first Asian American woman to represent the United States in the Olympics Games in 1948. She was the first woman in Olympic history to win gold medals in both the three-meter springboard and ten-meter platform competitions. She was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1969.

Birth name: Victoria Taylor Manalo

Area of achievement: Sports

Early Life

Victoria “Vicki” Taylor Manalo Draves was born Victoria Taylor Manalo in San Francisco, California, to Theodore Manalo and Gertrude Taylor. Manalo’s father, a Filipino immigrant, was a musician and chef. Her mother, an English immigrant, was a homemaker. Victoria, her fraternal twin Consuelo, and an older sister Frances grew up in San Francisco’s South of Market district and attended Graham Elementary School.

At the age of ten, Manalo attended Red Cross swimming classes for the first time. She continued to pursue water sports through high school, practicing swimming and diving at two public pools. At seventeen, Manalo wanted to join the Fairmont Swimming and Diving Club in San Francisco. The coach, Phil Patterson, would not let her join because of her Filipino background. Instead, he created a separate club called the Patterson School of Swimming and Diving and allowed Manalo to enroll. Patterson also told her to change her name to Taylor, her mother’s English maiden name. She reluctantly agreed.

Manalo graduated from Commerce High School in 1942 and briefly attended San Francisco State Junior College. She took a civil service position in the US Army port surgeon’s office to help support her family. However, she continued to train and compete as a diver.

Manalo placed fourth in two diving events at the 1944 national championships. Heeding the advice of Korean American diving champion Sammy Lee, Manalo joined the Athens Club in Oakland to train with coach Lyle Draves. The young athlete matured under Draves’s tutelage, medaling in platform and springboard diving events at the national Tower Diving Championships in 1946, 1947, and 1948. She also began swimming under her own last name again. As Draves and Manalo worked together, a close relationship developed between them. In 1946, they married.

Life’s Work

In 1948, Victoria Manalo Draves entered the Olympic Trials. She lost two events to fellow diver Zoe Ann Olsen but still scored enough points to secure a position on the US team. Despite Olsen’s vow to secure gold at the London Olympics, Draves outperformed her rival, winning both the three-meter springboard and ten-meter platform competitions. She was the first woman in Olympic history to win both events. That year, Draves and men’s platform diver Sammy Lee shared the honorable distinction of becoming the first divers of Asian heritage to win Olympic gold medals.

Draves became a professional diver after the Olympics and traveled widely. She participated in a variety of platform-diving exhibitions in the Philippines. Although she was accorded celebrity status, Draves declined movie offers from MGM and Fox Studios to play stereotypical South Sea island girl roles. Instead, Draves joined Larry Crosby’s aquatic show Rhapsody in Swimtime in Chicago and later toured with the Buster Crabbes Aqua Parade across the United States and Europe.

In the early 1950s, Draves retired to begin raising a family. She and her husband also started a diving and swimming training program. Their four sons, Jeffrey, Dale, Kim, and David, all became divers as well.

Draves was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1969. Her other accolades include the Asian and Pacific Islander Americans Women’s Wall of Fame (1999), Los Angeles Athletics Club’s Outstanding Athlete (2005), and City College of San Francisco Distinguished Alumna Award (2005). October 27, 2006, marked the grand opening of the Victoria Manalo Draves Park in the South of Market district of San Francisco. The two-acre park symbolizes Draves’s significant contributions to the local Filipino community as well as to Asian American cultural history. In April 2010, Draves died in Palm Springs, California, from complications of pancreatic cancer.

Significance

Draves was a pioneer and role model for the Filipino and Asian American communities, as well as for female athletes in general. Although she came from a poor working-class family and faced ethnic prejudice, Draves’s skills, discipline, and belief in her athletic talents led to her success as a diver. She won gold medals in indoor-platform diving at the 1946, 1947, and 1948 National Diving Championships. She also made history at the 1948 Olympic Games in London, becoming the first Asian American woman to represent the United States and the first woman to win gold medals in both the springboard and platform competitions.

Bibliography

“Vicki Draves: The Olympics’ Prettiest Champion Joins a Professional Swim Troupe.” LIFE 16 May 1949: 90–92. Print. A sports profile that reports on Draves’s decision to turn professional and join Buster Crabbe’s swimming troupe. Includes photographs of the Olympic diver in action.

Litsky, Frank. “Victoria Manalo Draves, Olympic Champion Diver, Dies at 85.” New York Times. New York Times, 29 Apr. 2010: Web. 6 Jan. 2012. An obituary that chronicles how Draves overcame ethnic prejudice and became a double gold medalist in the 1948 London Olympics.

Pang, Angela. “Park Named after Filipina Olympian.” AsianWeek 3 Nov. 2006: 13. Print. An article documenting the official opening of the Victoria Manalo Draves Park in San Francisco, proudly celebrated by South of Market’s resident Filipino community.

Rodis, Rodel. “The Triumph of Victoria Manalo Draves.” AsianWeek. AsianWeek, 28 Apr. 2010. Web. 6 Jan. 2012. Recounts details from Draves’ life and athletic career, including the discrimination faced by the Asian community.