Gertrude Ederle

On April 6, 1896, the Olympic Games, a longtime tradition of ancient Greece, were reborn in Athens, 1,500 years after they were banned. 60,000 spectators attended, and 280 athletes came from 13 nations to compete in the international competition, and only men participated in the Games. Athletes participated in 43 events, including track and field, which were held at the Panathenaic Stadium, as well as cycling, swimming, gymnastics, weightlifting, wrestling, fencing, shooting, and tennis. 

[Image courtesy of International Olympic Committee]

 The 1900 Olympics in Paris were part of the 1900 World’s Fair. The competitions were spread over five months, and as they were under-publicized, they were not well attended. Teams were often composed of individuals from more than one country. This was the first Olympics games to involve women, who competed in five sports: tennis, sailing, croquet, equestrian, and golf. Of all of the participants, 2.2% were women. 

[Image courtesy of International Olympic Committee]

Until 1912, Olympic swimming events were for men only. Women’s swimming and diving events were introduced at the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm for the first time. Fifty-seven women from 11 nations competed, the majority of whom only competed in two events: the 100 meter freestyle and 400 meter freestyle relay.

[Image courtesy of Olympic.org]

Gertrude Ederle was born on October 23, 1905, in New York City. She was one of five children. Her parents, Henry and Anna Ederle, were German immigrants who owned a butcher shop on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. 

[Image courtesy of Mary and Marty Ward]

Founded by Charlotte Epstein in 1917, the Women’s Swimming Association (WSA) was one of the first athletic organizations to promote women’s competitive sport in the United States and to promote the health benefits of swimming. Through the WSA, Epstein would launch the swimming careers of many American Olympic swimming champions, including Ederle.

[Image courtesy of International Swimming Hall of Fame]

[Image courtesy of Mary and Marty Ward]

After decades of protest and activism for suffrage rights, on August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment was ratified, giving women the right to vote. However, this right was only guaranteed for white women; African American women were restricted from voting through racist tactics such as poll taxes and literacy tests, as well as violence. It wasn’t until the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed that the law prohibited states from using literacy tests and other methods of excluding African Americans from voting.

[Image courtesy of the Boston Globe]

At the 1924 Paris Olympics, 3,089 athletes competed in 126 events.  135 of those athletes were women, who were only eligible to compete in 17 sports. Ederle won a gold medal in the 400 meter freestyle relay, and bronze medals in the 100 meter, and 400 meter freestyle races.

[Image courtesy of Mary and Marty Ward]

On August 24, 1925, with sponsorship from the Women’s Swimming Association, Ederle set her sights on what was considered the ultimate endurance test of the time: to swim across the English Channel. Only five men had successfully swam across the Channel before. 

Setting off from a beach in France, Ederle swam the crawl, or what’s now called the freestyle stroke, which was very unusual as most others had used the breaststroke. Half-way through the 22 mile swim, the waves were extremely strong, and Ederle’s coach, Jabez Wolffe, touched her, while she was caught under a large wave. This was a violation, and disqualified her. 

[Image courtesy of Mary and Marty Ward]

Ederle was determined to swim the Channel. To enhance her mobility in the water, Ederle designed her own goggles and a more aerodynamic two-piece swimsuit — revolutionary for the time, when women wore full length skirts and often long-sleeves and stockings, which were sometimes made of wool. Women were told to conceal their bodies on the beach or at the pool, and these outfits were highly restrictive for swimming. 

Ederle also prepared a combination of olive oil, petrolatum, lard and lanolin to apply before the swim, to keep her body temperature up and protect her from jellyfish bites.

[Image courtesy of National Museum of American History, Gift of Gertrude C. Morrison]

On August 6, 1926, Ederle set off again from Cap Gris-Nez, France into the frigid water and treacherous tides, and successfully swam the English Channel, which separates Great Britain from the northwestern tip of France. The wind and currents during the swim were extremely strong and pushed her off course, making her swim several extra miles. She beat the existing men’s record by two hours, swimming the 22 miles in 14 hours and 39 minutes. 

Ederle’s Channel swim helped to demonstrate that women could be great athletes, and contested the widely believed notion that women were the “the weaker sex.”

[Image courtesy of GETTY]

At age 20, Ederle rocketed to international fame as the first woman to successfully swim the English Channel. Two million people celebrated her with a ticker tape parade in the streets of New York City. The crowds chanted, ”Trudy! Trudy!” even though her family had always called her ”Gertie.” In the press, she was widely called “Queen of the Waves” and “The Grease Smeared Venus.”

[Image courtesy of Mary and Marty Ward]

Ederle starred in a short film, “Swim, Girl, Swim,” and a song was written about her called, ”Tell Me, Trudy, Who Is Going to Be the Lucky One?,” which referred to the proposals for marriage she received by mail almost every week.

Ederle’s Channel swim helped to demonstrate that women could be great athletes, and inspired more than 60,000 women throughout the U.S. to earn Red Cross swimming certificates in the 1920s.

[Image courtesy of GETTY]

After successfully swimming the English Channel, Ederle became a professional swimmer, which disqualified from continuing a career in competitive swimming, or from competing in the Olympics. In order to work, Ederle toured the country on the vaudeville circuit, demonstrating the crawl in a portable tank. She toured on the road for two years, doing five shows a day.

[Image courtesy of The Cincinnati Enquirer]

The Channel swim led Ederle to experience greater hearing loss, and she eventually became almost deaf. She told an interviewer, “I finally got the shakes. I was just a bundle of nerves. I had to quit the tour and I was stone deaf.”

[Image courtesy of Corsicana Daily Sun]

The first Olympic-style games for athletes with  disabilities took place in Rome in 1960. Four hundred athletes from 23 countries, gathered at the Olympic Stadium, just days after the Olympics had concluded, competing in archery, basketball, swimming, fencing, javelin, shot put, club throwing, snooker, swimming, table tennis and the pentathlon. For more than a decade, Paralympic competition was only held for summer sports.

[Image courtesy of Paralymic.org]

Ederle’s swimsuit from her English Channel swim, along with her trophies, and the articles and advertisements in which she was featured are on display at the International Swimming Hall of Fame.

[Image courtesy of Hannah and 40 Pools]

In 1976, 198 athletes from 16 countries participated in the first Paralympic Winter games, competing in alpine and nordic skiing for amputees and athletes with low-vision. This was also the first paralympics to  feature athletes who were not wheelchair users, and included athletes with a range of disabilities. 

[Image courtesy of Paralymic.org]

At the 2012 London Olympics, Lia Neal became the first African American woman to swim in an Olympic Final for the U.S., where she won the bronze medal for the 4×100 meter relay. 

[Image courtesy of Tim Binning, theswimpictures]

[Image courtesy of Kevin C. Cox]