By David Barron
Simone Manuel, the two-time Olympic gold medal-winning swimmer from Fort Bend County who has used her groundbreaking skills to support athletes of color and children of underserved communities, got a surprise boost in that campaign Thursday from Comcast, the parent company of Olympics partner NBC.
Comcast is contributing 100 laptop computers and 100 subscriptions to its Internet Essentials services to young members of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Houston’s Fort Bend County location, the company announced Thursday during an interview with Manuel on the Peacock Network show “Brother from Another.”
Manuel, 24, a graduate of Fort Bend Austin High School and Stanford University who now trains in Palo Alto, Calif., in 2016 became the first female Black athlete from the United States to win an Olympic gold medal in swimming.
She won four medals at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics and two years ago became the first woman to win seven total medals at the FINA world swimming championships.
Manuel, who also is working with Comcast on an Internet Essentials program in Northern California, equated access to Internet services to the access to swimming classes that she received as a young swimmer in Fort Bend County.
“When I was 12, I was struggling with my place in the sport of swimming. I wasn’t sure if it was the sport for me because of the lack of representation and some of the racism I faced in the sport,” she told “Brother from Another” hosts Michael Holley and Michael Smith.
“I asked my mom why there were not many people who looked like me in swimming. She didn’t know, but we researched the history and that showed me that black people could swim. We just didn’t have access to do so. I was fortunate to have access, and I’m going to pursue my dream.”
In similar fashion that swimming is a life-saving skill, she said broader Internet access through services such as the Internet Essentials program “opens doors and opportunities to people to take advantage of it.”
Manuel, who is in training for the scheduled 2021 Tokyo Olympic, has frequently discussed the difficulties she faced as a child as one of the few Black children in local swimming programs and also has been among the more active Olympic athletes in calling for social and economic justice reforms.
She also has launched a website, simonemanuel.co, and did a brief film for Procter and Gamble, an Olympic sponsor, in which she discussed the “racial reckoning” of recent months in the United States, referenced her own confrontations with racial prejudice and her hope that her story and those of others “can incite positive change.”
The Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Houston operates more than a dozen locations in the Houston area, including the Fort Bend County center.
Comcast, which is the largest cable operator in Houston, last year announced plans for more than a thousand WiFi-connected “Lift Zones” in community centers nationwide and has donated tens of thousands of laptops to underserved communities.
The Internet Essentials program also has helped more than eight million low-income people to connect to the Internet at their homes.
Manuel, who continues to train at Stanford, said preparation for the limited swimming season leading up to the Olympic trials has been going well and that she’s been able to keep up her morale during the delay.
“The best thing I can do is to stay connected to the people I love. They’ll always encourage me and uplift me,” she said. “It’s about keeping things in perspective, connecting with your loved ones and taking it one day at a time.”
2016 Olympics photo Getty Images
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