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Tuesday, June 6, 2000

Hall of fame
to honor spring-
board legend

Hawaii's Aileen Riggin Soule, 94,
paved the way for women swimmers
and divers by winning
Olympic gold in 1920

By Pat Bigold
Star-Bulletin

Honolulu's Aileen Riggin Soule, the world's oldest living gold medalist, will be inducted into the New York Metropolitan Swimming Hall of Fame at Eisenhower Park on Thursday.

Soule, the 94-year-old pioneer in women's Olympic aquatics, will be inducted in absentia.

Having been invited to be a guest of the International Olympic Committee in Sydney, she said she is opting to conserve her energy for the trip this fall.

She was a resident of Brooklyn Heights in 1920 when she became a member of the first U.S. women's Olympic swimming and diving team and won a gold medal in springboard diving at Antwerp.

At 14, she was the youngest Olympic gold medalist ever at the time.

"Of course, I'm pleased to be inducted in New York City because it was so difficult for women in those days," said Soule, who is a charter member of the Women's Swimming Association of New York. "There weren't any swimming pools deep enough for women to dive in."

The New York Athletic Club had adequate indoor facilities for swimming and diving but it was exclusively a men's club.

So she and her 1920 Olympic teammate, Helen Wainwright (silver medal), had to wait for summers when they could practice their diving in a tidal pool at Manhattan Beach.

They developed their swimming talents at the YWCA and at any other pool not off limits to women.

Soule said she also recalls the roadblock that the U.S. Olympic Committee placed in her path to the 1920 Games.

"They didn't want to take children to the Olympics," she said, citing the fact she and Wainwright were both very young. "They asked who would take care of us. But our club manager, Charlotte Epstein, went down there and said, 'What are you doing to these kids who worked so hard?' And we wound up going."

Their volunteer swim coach, Louis deBreda Handley, a 1904 Olympian, also is being inducted into the Metropolitan Swimming Hall of Fame.

"He was always Mr. Handley to us and we were always Miss Riggin and Miss Wainwright to him," Soule said.

Soule won silver in diving and bronze in the 100-meter backstroke in Paris in 1924.

Also joining Soule in the swimming hall of fame is English Channel swimmer Gertrude Ederle.