Do we like them?Do we like Simone Manuel?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Decent and on the right side for years, with the caveat that the record on some topics is thin.
Manuel grew up in Sugar Land, Texas, and swam at her first Olympic trials at 15. After a Stanford career she turned pro in 2018, and at the 2016 Rio Games she won four medals, two of them gold. That made her a household name well before she was 20.
The next chapter is the one that makes her interesting. Tokyo in 2021 went badly: she missed the 100m free final and left with only a relay bronze, and she considered retiring. She took a long break, started swimming again in 2022, then moved to Arizona to train under coach Bob Bowman. By the 2024 trials she was back, finishing fourth in the 100 free and then winning the 50 free to book her Paris spot.
Now the harm check, which is a clean one on what we could find. Manuel has talked about race in swimming since Rio, telling CBS News in 2020 the sport has a long way to go on diversity and inclusion, and she pushed for an inclusion rider in her 2018 TYR deal. We found no campaigning against any group, no conspiracy-theory slide and no dodgy company. The record is thin on LGBTQ+ topics specifically, so it's a pass on what's there, not a deep one.
Her record on the good-person side is just as quiet. A search for lawsuits, accusations and allegations came back with nothing about her, which is rarer than you'd think for an Olympian. What does show up is her turning up for kids: in June 2026 she joined nearly 600 children from five Central Florida nonprofits at Disney's Typhoon Lagoon for The World's Largest Swimming Lesson.
The recent form is a story in itself. At the August 2026 Pan Pacific Championships in Irvine she was fourth in the 100 free, and she swam the third leg-to-anchor spot on the 4x100m free relay that won gold in an American record 3:29.32. She doesn't come across as someone who coasts. Back in 2024 she said she would rather try and fail than not even try at all, and her swimming since backs that up.