This park, named after the first Filipino-American Olympic winner, diver Victoria Manalo (aka Vicki Draves) and the two murals you see across Folsom St, mark this as the center of SoMa Pilipinas Filipino Cultural Heritage District. This park is two acres: one acre for each of her gold medals.
Forced to conceal her origins during the 1940s, Victoria Manalo is now proudly claimed by San Francisco and the Filipino community. Fortunately, she was still alive to see this park open in 2006.
"Manalo" means "win" in Tagalog. Overcoming her fear of heights and drowning, Vicki Manalo became the first woman to be awarded gold medals for both the ten-meter platform and the three-meter springboard. She was also the first American woman to win two gold medals in diving, and the first Asian American to win Olympic gold medals.
Manalo was born here, in SoMa, in 1924, a time when her English mother and Filipino father could already get married, but could not yet safely walk hand-in-hand in public.
She wanted to be a ballet dancer, but her parents could not afford dancing classes. She took swimming lessons in the Mission District Red Cross pool. When she first dove, at the Fairmont Club, her father's name was seen as too Asian for the post-Pearl-Harbor America. The coach, Phil Patterson, formed the Patterson School of Swimming and Diving to isolate her from the other, white, swimmers. He also spoke to Manalo's mother and arranged that Vicki would compete under her mother's maiden name (Taylor). The other swimmers were not as prejudiced as the coach and in his absence friendship, not segregation, was the rule.
The second Asian American to win an Olympic gold medal was Victoria's friend, Sammy Lee. He encouraged Manalo to stand firm in the face of discrimination and introduced her to her future coach and husband, Lyle Draves.
Lyle ran the swimming and diving program at the prestigious Athens Athletic Club in Oakland. Manalo started training in Oakland, where her heritage was not an issue, but soon Draves moved to Los Angeles. At first Victoria commuted to continue training with him, but the drive is at least five hours now, and was longer in the 1940s. For over a year she was left without a coach. Finally, in 1946, they were married.
The next two years were a string of victories, culminating in her 1948 Olympic win, after which Manalo left amateur sport. She performed for another two years and left the public eye, emerging only briefly to advocate for social causes. She died in 2010.
Aside from this park there is also a picnic area named after her in the Golden Gate Park
Use the button below to get directions there, and then pick one of the nearby locations from the list at the bottom of the page. If none of them strike your fancy try changing the drop-down to "All Locations".