The Olympics begin this week in Paris, and the opening ceremonies are Friday. Until then, we look back at some athletes from Hampton Roads who won gold on the world’s biggest stage. Earlier, we looked at Pernell “Sweet Pea” Whitaker and Gabby Douglas.
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Great Bridge High has produced standout athletes in a variety of sports, including a handful of first-round draft picks in baseball.
But one of its greatest athletes made a splash in swimming.
Thompson Mann was the first swimmer to break the 1-minute mark in the 100-meter backstroke. He set a world record of 60 seconds flat at the 1964 Olympic trials. Then, at the Tokyo Olympics later that year, he was the lead on the 400-meter medley relay with a 59.6-second leg. Mann, Bill Craig (breaststroke), Fred Schmidt (butterfly) and Steve Clark (freestyle) finished in 3 minutes, 58.4 seconds to win the gold medal.
“I don’t know which was better, when he was born and put in my arms or when he won the gold medal,” Thompson’s mother, Ethelyn Mann, told Virginian-Pilot reporter Russell Borges in a postrace telephone interview.
Mann grew up in Hickory and was a 1960 graduate of Great Bridge High. But Great Bridge had no swimming team back then, and Mann’s basketball career ended after junior varsity because of “a back malady,” according to a Pilot story. But Mann went to the University of North Carolina on a swimming scholarship, won 10 Atlantic Coast Conference titles and was a seven-time All-American from 1961-64.
Following his gold-medal swim in the Olympics, Mann won U.S. Indoor and Outdoor national titles in both the 100- and 200-yard backstroke in 1965, clocking a world’s-best time and American record (52.5 seconds) in the 100.
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Postscript
Mann, inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1984 and the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame in 1988, attended the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond and became a doctor, following in his father’s footsteps. Mann died in 2014 at age 76. Mann Drive, off Cedar Road in Great Bridge, is named after him.
This year’s 757 Olympians
Leah Crouse, field hockey (Virginia Beach)
Justin Dowell, cycling/BMX (Virginia Beach)
Grant Holloway, track and field (Chesapeake)
Stephanie Roble, sailing (Old Dominion)
Quincy Wilson, track and field (Chesapeake)
Edose Ibadin, track and field for Nigeria (Hampton University)
Chidi Okezie, track and field for Nigeria (Hampton University)
