Cullen Jones, 24-year-old, African American Bronx native is only the second African American swimmer to win a gold medal. He won the 400-meter freestyle relay at the Beijing Games. Anthony Ervin In 2000, was the first African American swimmer to make the US Olympic team. At the 2000 Summer Olympics, he participated and won the gold medal in the Men’s 50m Freestyle, finishing with the same time as Gary Hall Jr. In May 2005, Ervin sold his gold medal on Ebay for $17,100, donating the money to UNICEF for the tsunami relief.
Jones began swimming when he was 5, not long after he nearly drowned at an amusement park in Pennsylvania. The inner tube he was riding on a waterslide flipped over and pinned him underwater. He lost consciousness and coughed up a pint of water as lifeguards revived him. A few days later, his mother enrolled him in a swimming class.
"I’ve got big plans," Jones told Scott Fowler of McClatchy Newspapers after the victory in Beijing. "I want more minority kids to go to a swimming pool and try to swim because of me. I want kids to say, ‘Look, a black swimmer. And he’s got a gold medal!’ And I want them to get in the water because of it."
A recent study sponsored by USA Swimming found that 58 percent of black children cannot swim, compared with 31 percent of white children. And, according to a recent report by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, black children are three times as likely to drown as any other group of children.
In 2006, Jones signed a contract with Nike that helped make him a role model for young black swimmers. And he recently received $10,000 from Bank of America to help start the Cullen Jones Diversity Tour, which will hold swim meets and clinics for minority youths.
Jones hopes the victory will raise his profile as the black Aquaman, the world-class sprinter who crisscrosses the country teaching African American children how to swim.
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