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<!--US English--> 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.