Get to Know the Ocean State’s Olympians

Saunderstown resident Elizabeth Beisel is the only Rhode Islander to have represented Team USA in three Olympic games. Photography by Mike Lewis/Courtesy of Elizabeth Beisel.

With Paris hosting its first Summer Olympics in a century, Rhode Island’s ties to the five-ring festival come to mind.

In 1924, Newport-born swimmer/diver Aileen Riggin became the state’s first two-time Olympian, coming off a gold medal from the 1920 springboard event in Antwerp, Belgium. Upon claiming a springboard silver plus 100-meter backstroke bronze, she became Rhody’s first multimedalist.

The state’s most recent Summer Olympian has her own distinction: Saunderstown swimmer Elizabeth Beisel is the only Rhode Islander to have represented Team USA in three Olympic Games (2008, 2012, 2016). Medal-wise, she peaked on her second go-round in London, winning silver in the 400-meter individual medley and bronze in the 200-meter backstroke.

Besides other notables like trailblazing Narragansett Tribe athlete Tarzan Brown — who qualified for the 1936 marathon — the state has sent fifteen medalists to the Summer Olympics or Paralympics. The first — Providence cyclist Eddie Root — had one first-place, one second-place and four third-place finishes in non-medal events at 1904’s St. Louis Games.

In 1912, two other Providence products became the first locally born Olympians to receive customary hardware: Brown University-educated runner Norm Taber won 3,000-meter team gold and 1,500-meter individual bronze while cyclist Al Loftes helped his team to road-race bronze.

After that, Rhody had a quiet quarter-century until two locals competed for medals in different sports at 1948’s London Games. Providence native Bob Bennett won a hammer throw bronze while Bristol-born British rower Jack Wilson helped the host country to coxless-pairs gold.

At the next Olympiad in Helsinki, Finland, in 1952, Janet Moreau — a record-smashing swimmer at Pawtucket’s Tolman High School — transferred her prowess to the track and won gold in the 4×100-meter relay.

Back in the pool, Newport’s John Parker played on his second United States water polo team in 1972, boosting them to bronze.

America’s opposite coast proved most fertile for Ocean Staters in 1984’s Los Angeles Games. There, Providence-born rowers Charlie Clapp III and Harriet “Holly” Metcalf helped their teams to silver and gold, respectively, while Newport’s Scott Steele was a silver-medal Windglider.

Two other Newport natives, Carol Lavell and Michael Poulin, made up half of the four-player, mixed-gender U.S. equestrian team that garnered bronze at Barcelona in 1992.

Besides Beisel, no locals have medaled in the Summer Olympics since Barcelona. But North Kingstown adaptive rower Allie Reilly won silver with the mixed coxed team at the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics.