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The Way I See It
IN the summer of 1920, U.S. Olympic officials didn't want Aileen Riggin and Helen Wainwright to board the troop transport going to Antwerp, Belgium. Bad break for 1920
gold medalist"They didn't OK Helen and I to go until the last minute," said Riggin Soule.
"They thought we were too young at 14 and they didn't want to be responsible for two kids in Europe. We even looked younger than our ages."
But the two kids were America's best divers back then and U.S. officials finally decided to take the risk and allow them to go.
It was a good risk.
The youngsters behaved themselves and came back to a ticker tape parade in New York City with medals.
Soule won gold and Wainwright, now deceased, won silver in the first women's springboard diving competition.
Four years later, Soule, confident and worldly at 18, went to Paris to take silver in diving and bronze in the 100-meter backstroke.
Women accounted for no more than 2.9 percent of the Olympic field in 1920.
They represent more than 38 percent of the field in Sydney.
At age 94, Soule would like to see them, meet them, encourage them. She's supposed to be there now. But she's not.
Blame it on a broken arm she suffered last week in a fall at home.
The break is now compounded by a broken heart.
"Please ask people not to call me," whispered Soule, who is too weak to even hold the phone very long.
Earlier this summer, she was invited by International Olympic Committee president Juan Samaranch to attend the Games in Sydney at the IOC's expense.
She was to stay at Samaranch's hotel and be honored as the world's oldest surviving individual gold medalist.
Her teammate at the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp, 103-year-old bronze medal diver "Harry" Hal Haig Prieste, is there.
The talkative former Keystone Kop is getting the press she deserves, handing back an Olympic flag he stole in Antwerp on a dare from Duke Kahanamoku and muttering something about Soule having had a crush on him.
Baloney, she insists. Prieste was nine years older and towered over Soule, a 4-foot-7, 65-pounder at the time.
BUT she's not in Sydney to set the record straight.
Nor is she there to bask in the recognition that America's IOC member, Anita DeFrantz, was prepared to make sure she got.
"She's a great woman and we had several options we were prepared to try, depending upon how well she felt," said DeFrantz, who realized that Australia would be swamping the ceremonies with its own Olympic legends.
"We would have had her recognized at the diving competition in which she won her gold. We might have had her at the IOC president's press conference on the 14th."
She's missing an honor that she should have received in Atlanta when America was able to call the shots on who got the spotlight.
At least the IOC showed her enough respect to make the offer.
Just like her green light for the 1920 Olympics was last-moment, so was her decision to yield to her weakened body and not go to the 2000 Olympics.
"I can be miserable here or I can be miserable there," she said with a humorous spin to her painful situation as late as Friday. "So, I'm going to go for it."
The body is in Honolulu, but Soule's spirit is in Sydney, trading jibes with Hal Prieste and spinning tales of Olympic history to the world's media.
Pat Bigold has covered sports for daily newspapers
in Hawaii and Massachusetts since 1978.