This is one of a 10-part series highlighting Stanford’s achievements in the Olympic Games. This series is limited to gold-medal accomplishments by athletes who were current or former Stanford students at the time of their performances.
June 19, 2012
STANFORD, Calif. - Ernst “Ernie” Brandsten was a native of Sweden, but that didn't stop people from calling the Stanford coach, “father of diving in the United States,” because of the way he revolutionized the sport in this country.
Brandsten coached aquatics at Stanford for 31 years before retiring in 1947 and, in that time, coached Stanford swimmers and divers to nine Olympic gold medals.
Norman Ross produced three swimming gold medals in 1920. And in 1924, Stanford divers swept the platform and springboard events, with Al White winning two golds in 1924 and Pete Desjardins matching that feat in 1928.
The success of Brandsten’s protégés reflects the success of the man himself. He was an Olympic diver for Sweden in 1912, as well as a ski jumper, and later helped chart the coast of Alaska for the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey before landing at Stanford in 1916.
His divers won 25 AAU national championships over a nine-year stretch, and Brandsten was the U.S. diving coach on four consecutive Olympic teams (1924-’36). He also created innovations in diving styles, invented the tapered springboard and movable fulcrum for diving boards that carried his name, and first mounted a diving board over a sand pit for dry-land training.
Brandsten leased 10 acres of shoreline on now off-limits Searsville Lake and turned it into a recreational destination, complete with platform diving board, boathouse, and sandy beach for sunbathers and swimmers. He even brought the national high-diving championships to the lake in 1923.
As for the Olympics, Brandsten’s legacy began in the murky waters of Antwerp, Belgium, in 1920.
The Olympic “pool” wasn’t a pool at all. It was a moat. Boardwalks had been constructed to mark the boundaries, and diving boards were placed upon them. The events were held in cloudy, rainy weather. But that wasn’t the worst part.
One diver described the water as “Black, dark. Dark, black.” She also noted that the water was the coldest any of the contestants had ever encountered. The locker rooms had no hot showers, so divers had to bundle up in towels, bathrobes, earmuffs, and wool socks between dives.
The darkness of the water was so disorienting that the divers had trouble finding the surface, which kept them in the water longer and added to the discomfort.
 | The Olympic "pool" wasn't a pool at all. It was a moat. |
But the conditions didn’t hinder Ross, regarded as a heavy favorite after winning five of six individual golds at the 1919 Inter-Allied Games in Paris.
Ross didn’t disappoint, capturing the 400-meter freestyle, the 1,500 free, and swimming a leg of the winning 4x200 free relay in world record time (10:04.4). Ross’s three gold medals exceeded the two of Hawaiian swimming and surfing legend Duke Kahanamoku, who joined Ross on the winning relay.
The 400 free was expected to be a spirited duel between Ross and Frank Beaurepaire, but the Australian went out too quickly and faded, with Ross coming from behind to win in 5:26.8. In the 1,500 free, Ross took the lead from Canada’s George Vernot at 900 meters and gradually pulled away to win in 23:23.2.
Ross would finish his career with 13 world records at international distances and win 18 AAU national championships. He later attended law school at Northwestern University, married a Hawaiian princess, served as an aide to General James Doolittle, and became the country’s first classical disc jockey while known as “Uncle Normie.”
The Antwerp Games also christened the emergence of the Brandsten divers on the world scene. Clarence Pinkston won the fancy diving competition, which consisted of four optional and four compulsory dives executed from both height platforms.
In 1924, Al White led Stanford divers to a sweep of the platform and springboard competitions, leading Dave Fall and Clarence Pinkston on the platform, and Pete Desjardins and Pinkston on the springboard.
White was a diver of grace and agility, and the first to ever win both diving titles in Olympic competition. An exceptional athlete, White was captain of Stanford’s Pacific Coast championship gymnastics team and a member of a United States basketball team that toured Europe in 1919.
Desjardins was next, winning both diving golds at the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam. However, Egyptian diver Farid Simiaka was mistakenly awarded the victory in the platform and the Egyptian national anthem was playing when the results were reversed in Desjardins’ favor.
A forward 1 1/2 gainer on the springboard that earned a perfect 10 from the judges punctuated his gold-medal day. Desjardins and White remain among only three men to win gold in both events at an Olympics.
Born in Manitoba, Canada, Desjardins grew up in Miami Beach and came to Stanford because of Brandsten. He eventually returned to Miami to perform in a water show with Johnny Weismuller and the Billy Rose Aquacades.
Stanford swimmers have combined for 92 Olympic medals over the years, but they’ve never been as dominant as they were in the Brandsten era.
-- David Kiefer, Stanford Athletics