Aileen Riggin

Aileen Muriel Riggin (May 2, 1906 – October 17, 2002), also known by her married name Aileen Soule (also Aileen Riggin Soule), was an American competition swimmer and diver. She was Olympic champion in springboard diving in 1920 and U.S. national springboard diving champion from 1923 to 1925. After retiring from competitions, she enjoyed a long and varied career in acting, coaching, writing and journalism. She was a swimming celebrity in Hawaii and the United States and an active ambassador of women's swimming well into old age.

Early life Born in Newport, Rhode Island, Riggin learned to swim at the age of six, in Manila Bay in the Philippines where her father, a U.S. Navy paymaster, was stationed.

Her family settled in Brooklyn Heights in New York and at the age of eleven she became a charter member of the celebrated Women's Swimming Association (WSA) of New York, founded by Charlotte Epstein in 1917. Her first WSA swimming coach was Louis de B. Handley of the New York Athletic Club, double gold medalist at St. Louis in 1904.

Riggin first took up diving in 1919 at the age of thirteen; she practiced in a tide pool on Long Island also making her the youngest female Olympic champion (a record that was surpassed in 1936 by 13-year-old American diver Marjorie Gestring).

In 1967 she was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. As a result of her fundraising and motivational presentations, she was selected to serve as Grande Dame of the Swimming Hall of Fame in 1988. She was a founder member of the Hawaii Senior Games Association, supporters of the Senior Olympics, and remained a board member into old age.

Soule was one of the most sought after swimming celebrities in Hawaii and the USA. As one of the surviving members of the United States team at the 1920 Antwerp Olympics, she was chosen to escort the Ceremonial Olympic Handover Flag, known as the Antwerp Flag at the opening ceremony of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and she was invited to address Team USA at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics as a motivational speaker. She continued to swim into old age and at the age of 85 she broke six world records in freestyle and backstroke sprints in the World Masters for her age group (85–89). Furthermore, by the end of 1996 she held eleven national records and five world records in the next age group (90–94).

At the end of the 20th century, Riggin was the last surviving champion from the 1920 Olympic Games and she was celebrated as the nation's oldest living female Olympic gold medalist.

Death Aileen (Riggin) Soule died in October 2002 in a nursing home in Honolulu, Hawaii of natural causes. Following her death, she was remembered by friends and family as a "pioneer of women's sports". In November 2002, she was posthumously inducted into the Hawaii Sports Hall of Fame.