Riggin Aileen (2 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. 1st Edition. Instruction from the famous American swimmer and olympic diving champion in 1920. 8vo. 219pp. Numerous diagrams in text, some passages highlighted in coloured pencil. Original blue cloth faded and worn at spine, otherwise a good firm copy.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Fair. Presumed First Edition, First printing. vii, 219, [3] pages. Illustrations (photographs, drawings). DJ is in a plastic sleeve and is worn, torn, soiled and chipped. The author was an Olympic diving champion, 1920; seven-time winner of the National Springboard Championship; Member of the W.S.A. relay team that held the world's records for five consecutive years. 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. Riggin made the first underwater swimming film in 1922 and the first slow motion coaching films for Grantland Rice in 1923. She retired from competitions in 1925 and spent her time helping to organize exhibitions and swimming demonstrations overseas. She had minor roles in several Hollywood films: she was a dancer in the 1933 musical Roman Scandals and she skated in the first Sonja Henie film One in a Million in 1936. She starred in Billy Rose's first Aquacade at the 1937 Cleveland Exposition, which she also helped to organize. She wrote books about her experiences in swimming and she became a successful sports journalist, writing newspaper columns for the New York Daily Post, the London Morning Post and others. Diving is the sport of jumping or falling into water from a platform or springboard, usually while performing acrobatics. Diving is an internationally recognized sport that is part of the Olympic Games. In addition, unstructured and non-competitive diving is a recreational pastime. Competitors possess many of the same characteristics as gymnasts and dancers, including strength, flexibility, kinaesthetic judgment and air awareness. Some professional divers were originally gymnasts or dancers as both the sports have similar characteristics to diving. Swimming is an individual or team racing sport that requires the use of one's entire body to move through water. The sport takes place in pools or open water (e.g., in a sea or lake). Competitive swimming is one of the most popular Olympic sports, with varied distance events in butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, freestyle, and individual medley. In addition to these individual events, four swimmers can take part in either a freestyle or medley relay. A medley relay consists of four swimmers who will each swim a different stroke, ordered as backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly and freestyle. Swimming each stroke requires a set of specific techniques; in competition, there are distinct regulations concerning the acceptable form for each individual stroke. There are also regulations on what types of swimsuits, caps, jewelry and injury tape that are allowed at competitions. Although it is possible for competitive swimmers to incur several injuries from the sport, such as tendinitis in the shoulders or knees, there are also multiple health benefits associated with the sport.