Desjardins, Pete

Pete Desjardins, byname of Ulise Joseph Desjardins, (born April 12, 1907, St. Pierre, Man., Can.—died May 6, 1985, Miami, Fla., U.S.), Canadian-born American diver who won a silver medal in the springboard at the 1924 Olympics in Paris and gold medals in the springboard and platform events at the 1928 Games in Amsterdam, an achievement that was not matched by a male diver until Greg Louganis won both events at the 1984 Games.

Desjardins was nicknamed “the Little Bronze Statue” (or “the Little Bronze Statue from the Land of Real Estate, Grapefruit, and Alligators”) for his height and year-round suntan; his family moved to Florida from Canada in 1917. From 1925 to 1927 he held the U.S. national outdoor springboard and platform titles, and he won the indoor springboard title in 1927 and 1928. The gold medal in the 1928 Olympic platform event was intitially awarded to Farid Simaika of Egypt before a tabulation error in the scoring was discovered, and Desjardins was declared the winner, interrupting the Egyptian national anthem at the medal ceremony.

Desjardins had enrolled at Stanford University in 1927, but in 1929 he was suspended—along with Johnny Weissmuller, Helen Meany, and Martha Norelius—by the Amateur Athletic Union for accepting an allegedly excessive amount of expense money for an exhibition. Desjardins’s protest was not successful, and he was thus denied the opportunity for a collegiate championship and was not eligible to compete in the 1932 Olympics. Turning professional in 1932, he participated in diving and swimming exhibitions around the world, often performing comedy routines with Weissmuller. In 1966 he was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame.