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Gertrude Caroline Ederle (October 23, 1906-November 30, 2003) was an American competition swimmer, Olympic champion, and world record-holder in five events.
On August 6, 1926, she became the first woman to swim across the English Channel. Among other nicknames, the press sometimes called her Queen of the Waves.
Gertrude Ederle was born on October 23, 1905, in Manhattan, New York City. She was the third of six children and the daughter of German immigrants, Gertrude Anna Haberstroh and Henry Ederle.
According to a biography of Ederle, America's Girl, her father ran a butcher shop on Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan. Her father taught her to swim in Highlands, New Jersey, where the family owned a summer cottage.
Ederle trained at the Women's Swimming Association (WSA), which produced such competitors as Ethelda Bleibtrey, Charlotte Boyle, Helen Wainwright, Aileen Riggin, Eleanor Holm and Esther Williams. Her yearly dues of $3 allowed her to swim at the tiny Manhattan indoor pool. But, according to America's Girl, the WSA was already the center of competitive swimming, a sport that was becoming increasingly popular with the evolution of a bathing suit that made it easier to get through the water. The director, Charlotte "Eppy" Epstein, had already urged the AAU to endorse women's swimming as a sport in 1917 and in 1919 pressured the AAU to allow swimmers to remove their stockings for competition as long as they quickly put on a robe once they got out of the water.
Ederle joined the club when she was only twelve. The same year, she set her first world record in the 880-yard freestyle, becoming the youngest world record holder in swimming. She set eight more world records after that, seven of them in 1922 at Brighton Beach. In total, Ederle held 29 US national and world records from 1921 until 1925.
At the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, Ederle won a gold medal as a member of the first-place U.S. team in the 4×100 meter freestyle relay. Together with her American relay teammates Euphrasia Donnelly, Ethel Lackie and Mariechen Wehselau, she set a new world record of 4:58.8 in the event final. Individually, she received bronze medals for finishing third in the women's 100-meter freestyle and women's 400-meter freestyle races.
Ederle had been favored to win a gold in all three events and would later say her failure to win three golds in the games was the biggest disappointment of her career. Still, she was proud to have been a part of the American team that brought home 99 medals from the Paris Olympics. It was an illustrious Olympic team -swimmer Johnny Weissmuller, oarsman Benjamin Spock, tennis player Helen Wills, and long-jumper DeHart Hubbard, who, according to America's Girl, was the first black man to win an individual gold. The U.S. Olympic team had its own ticker-tape parade in 1924.
More information: History
In 1925, Ederle turned professional. The same year she swam the 22 miles from Battery Park to Sandy Hook in 7 hours and 11 minutes, a record time which stood for 81 years before being broken by Australian swimmer Tammy van Wisse. Ederle's nephew Bob later described his aunt's swim as a midnight frolic and a warm-up for her later swim across the English Channel.
The Women's Swimming Association sponsored Helen Wainwright and Ederle for an attempt at swimming the Channel. Helen Wainwright pulled out at the last minute because of an injury, so Ederle decided to go to France on her own. She trained with Jabez Wolffe, a swimmer who had attempted to swim the Channel 22 times. During the training, Wolffe continually tried to slow her pace, saying that she would never last at that speed. The training with Wolffe did not go well.
In her first attempt at the Channel on August 18, 1925, she was disqualified when Wolffe ordered another swimmer (who was keeping her company in the water), Ishak Helmy, to recover her from the water. According to her and other witnesses, she was not drowning but resting, floating face-down. She bitterly disagreed with Wolffe's decision. Wolffe had previously commented that women may not be capable of swimming the Channel and it was speculated that he did not want Ederle to succeed.
Her successful Channel swim -this time training with coach Bill Burgess who had successfully swum the Channel in 1911- began approximately one year later at Cape Gris-Nez in France at 07:08 on the morning of August 6, 1926.
She came ashore at Kingsdown, Kent, 14 hours and 34 minutes later. Her record stood until Florence Chadwick swam the Channel in 1950 in 13 hours and minutes.
Ederle used motorcycle goggles to protect her eyes from salty water, as did Burgess in 1911. However, while Burgess swam breaststroke, she used crawl, and therefore had her goggles sealed with paraffin to render them water tight.
Ederle had poor hearing since childhood due to measles, and by the 1940s she was almost completely deaf. Aside from her time in vaudeville, she taught swimming to deaf children. She was never married and she was living in an old peoples home in 2001.
She died on November 30, 2003, in Wyckoff, New Jersey, at the age of 97. She was interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York City.
More information: The Glinda Factor
-like a child that I've known a long time.
It sounds crazy, I know,
but when I swim in the sea, I talk to it.
I never feel alone when I'm out there.
Gertrude Ederle
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