Vicki Draves
| Olympic medal record | ||
|---|---|---|
| Women's diving | ||
Competitor for the  United States |
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| Gold | 1948 London | 3 metre springboard |
| Gold | 1948 London | 10 metre platform |
Victoria "Vicki" Manalo Draves (December 31, 1924 – April 11, 2010) was an Olympic diver who won gold medals for the United States in both platform and springboard diving in the 1948 Summer Olympics in London.[1] She was born in San Francisco.
Victoria Manalo was born to a Filipino father and an English mother. Her parents met and married in San Francisco. She couldn't afford to take swimming lessons until she was 10 years old and took summer swimming lessons from the Red Cross, paying five cents admission to a pool in the Mission district.
Manalo met diving coach Phil Patterson, who convinced Draves to try her luck as a diver and she was a natural. She graduated from high school in 1942 and took a temporary civil service job in the port surgeon's office to add to the family’s meager income. With Patterson in the military during World War II, Victoria looked for a diving coach and found her future husband, Lyle Draves, whom she married in 1946.
Prior to competing in the 1948 Olympics, Draves won five United States diving championships.[2] Draves turned professional after the Olympics, joining Larry Crosby's "Rhapsody in Swimtime" aquatic show at Soldier Field in Chicago in 1948. She went on to appear in other shows and toured the U.S. and Europe with Buster Crabbe's "Aqua Parade."[1] She was elected to the International Swimming Hall of Fame in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in 1969.[2]
In October 2006, a two-acre park in San Francisco was named Victoria Manalo Draves Park in her honor. Draves and her husband lived in Palm Springs, California until her death on April 11, 2010[3], aged 85, from pancreatic cancer aggravated by pneumonia. Her four sons — David, Jeffrey, Dale and Kim — were never Olympic champions but became trick divers, specializing in cliff takeoffs from 90 to 100 feet.
[edit] References
- ^ a b McLellan, Dennis (April 29, 2010), "Victoria Manalo Draves dies at 85; Olympic gold medal diver", The Los Angeles Times, http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-victoria-draves-20100429,0,4537019.story
- ^ a b Litsky, Frank (April 29, 2010), "Victoria Manalo Draves, Olympic Champion Diver, Dies at 85", The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/30/sports/olympics/30draves.html?hpw
- ^ Smith, Terria (April 23, 2010), "Olympic diver Victoria Draves dies", The Desert Sun, http://www.mydesert.com/article/20100423/NEWS01/4230307/1006/news01/Olympic+diver+Victoria+Draves+dies
[edit] External links
- Vicki Draves' profile at Sports Reference.com
- Vicki Draves' obituary at International Swimming Hall of Fame
- "Victoria "Vicki" Draves". Olympic Athlete. Find a Grave. April 23, 2010. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=51525265. Retrieved June 30, 2011.
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- 1924 births
- 2010 deaths
- American divers
- Female divers
- American sportspeople of Filipino descent
- Olympic divers of the United States
- Divers at the 1948 Summer Olympics
- Olympic gold medalists for the United States
- Twin people from the United States
- Deaths from pneumonia
- Deaths from pancreatic cancer
- Cancer deaths in California
- Sportspeople from San Francisco, California
- People from Palm Springs, California
- Olympic medalists in diving
- Asian-American women in sports
