Gertrude Ederle

2 Pages 595 Words

Gertrude Caroline Ederle was born to a German immigrant family on October 23, 1906, in New York City. Gertrude’s mother taught her to swim at an early age. Gertrude’s mother tied a rope around her and let her down into the water. Dangling from the end of the rope, Gertrude learned to doggy paddle; within three days, she had learned to swim.
After one year of high school, Gertrude dropped out. At about the same time, Gertrude's older sister, Margaret, encouraged her to swim for the Women's Swimming Association of New York, and there Gertrude received her early training and coaching.
At the age of fourteen, Gertrude first demonstrated her long-distance swimming skill by defeating fifty-one other women in a three and one-half mile international race from Manhattan Beach to Brighton Beach. By the age of seventeen, Gertrude held eighteen world swimming records and was a member of the United States Olympic swimming team. During the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris, Gertrude won a gold and two bronze medals in the five racing events open to women. The following year, Gertrude swam the twenty-one mile distance from the Battery in lower Manhattan to Sandy Hook, New Jersey, in seven hours and eleven minutes, bettering the men's record. By this time, Gertrude held twenty-nine national and world records.
Gertrude Ederle first attempted to swim the English Channel on August 18, 1925. After eight hours and forty-six minutes in the water, with only six miles to go, a wave overtook her, and she stopped to spit out the salt water. Her trainer thought that she was collapsing and called to a man swimming alongside her to grab her. He did, therefore disqualifying her.
Accompanied by her father, her sister Margaret, and her trainer, Thomas W. Burgess in a tug boat, on the morning of August 6, 1926, Gertrude Ederle once again attempted to swim the English Channel. With a promise from her father that she would not be pulled out of the water unless she ...