Caroline Smith (USA)

Honor Pioneer Diver (1988)

The information on this page was written the year of their induction.

FOR THE RECORD: OLYMPIC GAMES: 1924 gold (10m platform); U.S. NATIONALS: 1925 1st place.

Caroline Smith has been a dancer, model, gymnast, actress and a cruise director on ships all over the East Coast.  For a short time, circa 1924, she was the queen of the high dive as winner of the Olympic gold medal off the ten meter platform.  She won by one-half point over Hall of Famer Betty Becker Pinkston with a perfect swan dive that came down “like a soaring bird and landed with barely a splash before 10,000 spectators.”  This was the first major championship the tall blonde Cinderella had ever won.  Caroline, from Cairo, Illinois, followed her Olympic triumph with a 1925 win in the U.S. Nationals to prove her Olympic gold was no fluke, and then went on to showbiz and diving in the Chicago World’s Fair “Century of Progress.”