SHE HAS DONE JUST SWIMMINGLY

By Steve Wulf

For those who question the sincerity of the Olympics, for those who think the Games are just a moneymaking machine or a sounding board for the cacophony of world politics, here are two words: Aileen Riggin.

Actually, she's Aileen Riggin Soule nowadays. But in 1920 Miss Riggin was the 14-year-old gold-medal winner in women's springboard diving at the Olympics in Antwerp. "At the time, I was just an eighth-grader from Brooklyn Heights competing for the Women's Swimming Association of New York," says Mrs. Soule, who now lives in Honolulu, where she still swims for the--brace yourself--Humuhumunukunukuapuaa Swim Club. "When Helen Wainwright, who was also 14, and I made the Olympic team that summer, U.S. officials tried to have us disqualified for being too young. But the manager of our club convinced them that we deserved to go to Antwerp and promised that we would not embarrass the U.S. So off we went on a troopship called the Princess Matoika: 400 men, 15 girls and five chaperones thrown together for 13 days. And every day our manager reminded us of her promise.

"The girls slept four to a cabin, but our accommodations were like the Ritz compared with the men, who often slept on the deck rather than in the hold. We all shared one canvas tank in which to train--we would swim strapped to the side of the tank. Jack Kelly, a handsome, charming man and a splendid rower, was on that trip. He was Grace Kelly's father, you know. And despite all the chaperones, there was romance in the air. Alice Lord, one of our divers, later married Richmond Landon, who won the gold medal in the high jump."

At 4 ft. 7 in. and 65 lbs., Aileen was the smallest Olympian, too small to compete in her real love, swimming. Diving was just something she did instead, and it was altogether different than it is today. "In Antwerp, we dove into the city canal, a moat really, right alongside the boathouse. In those days, the two final dives were literally picked out of a hat. Our second dive was a forward somersault--you had to land feet first. Fortunately, I went last and watched as all the other girls missed theirs. Then I made mine. But the scoring system was so laborious that you often had to read the morning paper to find out if you had won. So after my dive, I went to lunch, and when I came back, I found out I had won. It was all very exciting, even if I was 14. God, country and Yale, and all that. Of course, in my case, it was God, country and the Professional Children's School."

Aileen made the Olympic diving and swimming teams for the '24 Games in Paris, and she came away with two more medals, a silver medal in the springboard and a bronze in the 100-m backstroke. (She still has medal certificates signed personally by Baron Pierre de Coubertin.) Those were the Games later dramatized in Chariots of Fire, a movie to which Aileen takes great exception. "They did a grave injustice to Charley Paddock, the sprinter who became a dear friend. They portrayed him as a skinny fellow of few words. Why, he was powerfully built, and he could talk the ears off the Prince of Wales."

Paris was her last Olympic competition, although Aileen did return to the '28 Games in Amsterdam as one of the guides for Knute Rockne's overseas cruise for football coaches. Indeed, Aileen seems to have led many lives. She became one of America's first female sportswriters. She danced for Busby Berkeley in Roman Scandals. She skated in a Sonja Henie movie and performed in the first Aquacade for Billy Rose, husband of her friend and fellow mermaid, Eleanor Holm.

Aileen's first husband, Dwight Young, was killed in World War II, leaving her to raise their daughter Yvonne alone. Aileen later acquired three stepchildren when she married again, to Howard Soule, also a diver. She has continued to write, for the New Yorker, Good Housekeeping and, as recently as January, Swim Canada.

She never stopped swimming either. In May her family gave her a 90th birthday party and then put her on a plane for the U.S. Masters Swimming Championships in Cupertino, California. Aileen, the youngest female gold medalist in 1920 (and oldest living female one in the U.S.), won four gold medals in her age group.

Earlier this year, Aileen attended the U.S. Swimming Olympic trials in Indianapolis and was struck by how much things had changed. "I wrote down a list of 50 things that swimmers have today that we didn't, everything from starting blocks to weights to suits. You should have seen our suits, with their little ruffled skirts. And they were made of wool. Imagine what wet wool feels like against your skin."

One thing that hasn't changed, according to Aileen, is the feel of competition. "Girls today want very much to win, just as we did," she says. "But they also seem to care as much for each other as we did. That bonding is as important as the winning. I think that's what the Olympics are about, don't you?"