Aileen Riggin was born on May 2, 1906, in Newport, Rhode Island, later becoming a pioneering Olympic diver and swimmer.
Aileen Riggin was born on May 2, 1906, in Newport, Rhode Island, into a U.S. Navy family. Small in stature and initially frail from a childhood bout with typhoid fever, she took up swimming and diving as a form of physical therapy and rehabilitation.
Her early training in the waters around Newport and later in New York City laid the foundation for what would become a historic athletic career. Riggin trained with the Women's Swimming Association of New York, an organization instrumental in advancing competitive opportunities for female athletes during an era when women's participation in sport was still viewed with skepticism.
Her birth into a Navy family gave her both discipline and an early comfort with water, but it was her determination and coaching that transformed a sickly child into one of the most celebrated athletes of the early Olympic era. She would go on to become the youngest ever Olympic champion in an individual event at the time, and one of the most versatile female athletes of the 20th century, competing in both diving and swimming at the Olympic level.
Riggin's birth and subsequent rise to Olympic stardom symbolize the broader story of women's entry into elite international sport in the years following World War I, particularly after women's swimming and diving were added to the Olympic program in 1920.
Images
