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. Additionally, Draves became the first American woman to win two gold medals in diving. 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. 

December 31st, 1924 in San Francisco  /  Died:   Apr 11th, 2010