Helen Wainwright

Helen E. Wainwright (March 15, 1906 – October 8, 1965), also known by her married name Helen Stelling, was a competition diver and swimmer for the Women's Swimming Association of New York, who represented the United States at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, where she won a silver medal in 3-meter springboard diving and in the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, where she won a silver medal in the 400-meter freestyle. She remains the only woman to ever win Olympic silver medals in both swimming and diving.

Women's Swimming Association She was a member of the Women's Swimming Association (WSA) of New York a progressive organization founded by Charlotte Epstein in 1914. The organization was one of the first to advocate for women's membership in the AAU, women's participation in distance rather than just sprint events, and increasing and facilitating women's participation in the Olympics. Her WSA swimming coach Louis de B. Handley, a former Olympic Gold medalist, called Wainwright the world's fastest swimmer. She won 19 gold medals in U.S. national championships, 17 of them for swimming and the other two for diving events.

1920, 24 Olympic medals At the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp, aged just 14 years old, Wainwright won the silver medal in the women's 3-meter springboard competition.

Demonstrating sustained dominance in distance freestyle, on August 19, 1922, Wainwright set a world record in the women's 1500 metres freestyle swimming event, a distance of around 1 mile,

Post Olympic career Shortly after the 1924 Olympics, she performed in swimming-and-diving shows at the New York Hippodrome along with fellow U.S. Olympians and WSA colleagues Aileen Riggin and Gertrude Ederle. They later toured round some of the biggest theaters in the U.S. using a portable water tank.

While headlining a 1927 vaudeville performance in Dallas, Texas, though engaged to Ben Owen, she briefly married George Leonard Holland, an accompanying organist, Long Island resident and former athlete at the University of Pennsylvania. Wainwright never subsequently claimed the marriage was more than a spontaneous whim. She soon obtained an annulment with the permission of Holland. In the 1930s, she became a swimming coach on cruise liners out of New York.

She died at her home in Hampton Bays, Long Island at the age of 59 on Friday, October 8, 1965 after a long illness. A private graveside service was held for her on October 11 at Long Island National Cemetery, Farmingdale.

Honors Wainwright was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1972.