Vicki Draves

Who was Vicki Draves?

Victoria "Vicki" Manalo Draves 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. Draves became the first woman to be awarded gold medals for both the ten-meter platform and the three-meter springboard. 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. 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." She was elected to the International Swimming Hall of Fame in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 1969.