“I was then being asked to speak on these panels: ‘How can we support our Black community?’ ‘How can we diversify the sport of swimming?’” she said in a 2023 documentary produced by TOGETHXR.
“To be asked to continue to put my emotions on the line for other people to somehow be entertained by it—it was just a really tough time for me,” she said. “Because I was training so hard and never took a break, I think my body just ended up crashing.”
She wasn’t sure if she’d ever swim again.
When she explained all her symptoms to the doctor in 2021, he immediately knew what the problem was: “He just looked at me and goes, ‘You’re overtrained,’” Manuel said on the Unfiltered Waters podcast this April.
She modified her workouts for several weeks, but her performance continued to decline. At that point, her doctor was frank: “‘If you continue to train right now, you might not ever swim again,’” Manuel said. “That’s just how poorly my body was functioning.”
So, she took three weeks off. As she told The Ringer, she’d get up, eat breakfast, then hunker down on the couch, where she’d sleep for another four to five hours. That short break wasn’t enough to fully recover, but it allowed her to compete at the Trials in 2021. There, she placed ninth in the 100-meter freestyle, not making it to the finals in the event where she won gold in Rio. Afterward, she revealed her diagnosis in an emotional press conference, then rallied to win the 50 freestyle, earning a spot on Team USA in Tokyo.
She had a hard time knowing what—and when—to share about her health.
About that press conference: Even though she knew she was entering the 2021 Trials at less than her best, Manuel hesitated to discuss what she’d gone through.
In part, she was holding out hope for a miracle—that despite how poorly she felt, she might still perform well. She also feared that people might not take her seriously, thinking she was scared of competition or making excuses, she said on Unfiltered Waters.
Some of her predictions proved true. “People didn’t believe that I actually was overtrained,” Manuel said in the TOGETHXR documentary. “People said that I was distracted by all my other sponsor obligations, and that’s why I didn’t perform well. That I became lazy and my success went to my head.”
Her treatment included five months of complete rest.
The Tokyo Olympics didn’t go as well as Manuel hoped; though she won bronze in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay, she didn’t make the final in the individual 50-meter freestyle. When she returned back home, she saw her doctor again. He asked her how much time off she thought she needed, and she said the rest of the year. So, that was her prescription—she didn’t train, or do any physical activity at all, until January.
“I wasn’t allowed to get my heart rate up at all—it was really about giving my body total rest so that it could just continue to try to recover and get healthy,” she said on Unfiltered Waters.