Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World

by Glenn Stout

  Returning servicemen had seen Gay Paree and weren't turning back, while those they had left behind when they joined the service—women—had entered the workplace and emerged from the war with a newfound sense of independence and self-esteem. Hemlines started to rise, and women who had run households and worked during the war weren't satisfied to resume their place before the hearth, darning socks.

  Americans suddenly felt unbound and embarked on a headlong rush to have as much fun as possible. They didn't want to sit around, either. The economy was booming, and for the first time in American history a significant number of Americans had both the time and the money to indulge themselves. With the possible exception of the speakeasy, spectator sports suddenly became America's favorite pastime. Before the war, only baseball, boxing, horse racing, and bicycling had much of a fan following. But after the war, sports of all kinds grew exponentially, in terms of both spectators and participants. Even lesser sports such as yachting, wrestling, billiards, and rowing enjoyed newfound popularity. Daredevils such as Alvin "Shipwreck" Kelley became celebrities and elevated stunts like flagpole sitting to near respectability, while ersatz sports, like dance marathons and six-day bicycle races, attracted thousands of spectators. With no television and still-limited access to radio broadcasts, most sports fans had to either attend the event in person or read about it in the paper.

  Even swimming was on the precipice of a boom. Within a decade, water shows and carnivals that mixed athletic competition and artistry would draw thousands of fans to outdoor pools and indoor arenas. As yet, however, women's swimming was still something of a fringe sport, drawing press attention and the occasional curious crowd, such as that at the Day Cup race; but unless an international star such as Hilda James was participating, swimming attracted few spectators.

  But as the surprisingly large turnout to the Day Cup race had indicated, that was about to change. All the sport needed was a catalyst, the swimming equivalent of a Babe Ruth or Red Grange, a charismatic figure who would give the sport a personality.

  To no surprise, among the hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who set off that morning to enjoy the fine summer weather, thousands descended on Brighton Beach and the Brighton Beach Baths, most arriving by either train or subway. But what was shocking was that despite the fine weather several thousand of the visitors showed no interested whatsoever in the beach or in the Baths' several public pools, at least not at first. Instead they gathered around the twenty-five-yard competition pool, pressing forward until it appeared as if were one person to fall in, hundreds more might follow in a massive chain reaction.

  They had all come to see Trudy. Five days before she hadn't even been worthy of a mention in all the press buildup to the Day Cup, but now people who had never cared a wit for swimming were willing to give up half their weekend just to see her. The WSA had been so stunned by the public interest in Trudy that she was quickly added to the roster of WSA swimmers invited to compete against Hilda James in a special 300-meter invitational race. In the last few days the race had been touted as a return test between "the victor and the vanquished," Trudy Ederle versus everyone else.

  Trudy herself hadn't quite known what to think when her name was quickly added to the race, but Meg was absolutely thrilled to see her sister suddenly considered one of the WSA's top talents. The past few days had been a whirlwind in the Highlands. With Trudy's parents still overseas neither Trudy nor her family quite knew how to deal with her sudden notoriety.

  Apart from the 1920 Olympics, never before in the history of women's swimming had any true swimming race drawn more than a few hundred spectators, not even those featuring bathing beauties such as Annette Kellerman and Hilda James. Even then, many in the crowd were generally friends and the families of the swimmers themselves. Even the Day Cup race, which had been the subject of weeks of prerace publicity in the Tribune, had drawn a crowd of only three or four hundred dedicated souls.

  Yet on this day several thousand spectators turned out to see, of all things, a swimming race between women. At the time it was perhaps the largest crowd ever to attend a swim meet in the United States.

  Hilda James was looking for retribution. Her loss to the unknown Ederle had been a shock. She hadn't expected to lose and was hoping to regain her reputation before she embarked on a short tour of the Midwest. Helen Wainwright, Aileen Riggin, and several other accomplished WSA swimmers were scheduled to accompany her and swim in meets against the best swimmers in the Midwest before James was scheduled to return to the East Coast and set sail for Europe in early September. Trudy Ederle had not even been invited.

  Like James, Aileen Riggin and Ethel McGary were also hoping to prove that the loss to Ederle had been an anomaly. Ever since the 1920 Olympic gold medal winner Thelda Bleibtrey had turned professional, working as a coach, Riggin and McGary, along with Helen Wainwright, had been in an intense yet friendly battle to become the WSA's next golden girl. Wainwright wasn't scheduled to compete in the invitational, but Riggin and McGary, who had finished fourth and fifth in the Day Cup race behind Ederle, Wainwright, and James, were looking to stay on top. Although Trudy had been their superior over the course of three and a half miles, the girls were confident that over the shorter distance she would provide them with little competition.

  But as the swimmers warmed up before the race, a rumor swept through the crowd that Trudy was under the weather. A few days after the Day Cup race she got a touch of the flu and was still home in the Highlands. As the spectators learned that she would not compete, there was disappointment, but only a few left. After all it was a fine day, there would still be a race, and afterward there was still time to take a stroll on the beach or nearby boardwalk.

  Although Trudy Ederle was not in attendance, the instant the swimmers hit the water her presence was felt. James had been so shaken by her loss that in only four short days she had changed her stroke completely, abandoning the trudgen for her version of the American crawl, which she used in competition for the first time in this race. Although she hadn't found the new stroke easy, and at several points seemed to lose her rhythm as both Riggin and McGary nearly overtook her, the results were irrefutable. She didn't just win the race, she set a new world record at 300 meters, as race officials with stopwatches concluded she had bettered Bleibtrey's mark of 4 minutes 34 seconds by one-fifth of a second. Riggin and McGary had pushed her hard, however, and finished only three yards behind James, about a foot apart. Armed with the new stroke, for a moment, anyway, Hilda James was once again the best swimmer in the world. Trudy Ederle was just another contender.

  Over the next month, as they embarked on the midwestern tour, James and Wainwright gathered all the headlines. Like James, Wainwright seemed motivated by her loss to Trudy and responded with some record-setting performances and staked her own claim as the world's best female swimmer. She broke James's world record in the 300-meter freestyle race, beating James by several yards and clipping four seconds from James's preexisting record, winning in 4 minutes 29⅖ seconds. In the process she set an American record for 300 yards and eclipsed the world mark over 500 yards, beating James by ten yards and finishing in 7 minutes 9⅖ seconds, ten seconds faster than the previous mark. Although James dominated in 100-yard races in the freestyle, backstroke, and breaststroke, when the swimmers returned to New York, Wainwright competed in the national AAU mile championships at the ocean pool in Manhattan Beach. Over a two-day period, on August 18 and 19, Wainwright smashed five more records including the world record in the mile, winning in 26 minutes 44⅗ seconds, more than four minutes better than the previous mark, and also setting a new standard over 100 yards, 120 yards, 150 yards, and the half mile. Her performance pushed her to the forefront of the world of women's swimming. For the time being everyone forgot about Trudy Ederle.

  That was probably just as well. Despite her Day Cup win, Trudy hardly seemed prepared to compete at their level in shorter distances. But the tour gave her a chance to catch up, and while James and Wainwright p
ursued records Trudy did more than tread water.

  For all his commitment to swimming, Louis de Breda Handley did have his import business to run. He remained in New York, taking care of his trade and coaching WSA swimmers in the outdoor pool. While Wainwright, Riggin, and the other WSA stars were on tour, Handley was able to focus on Trudy. Before, she had just been another girl in the water, someone Handley worked with in a group with other girls. Now, all during the month of August she received individual attention as Handley worked with her to determine a pace she could maintain at distances ranging from 100 to 500 yards.

  As Trudy trained she seemed almost oblivious to the extra attention and completely nonchalant about her recent success. Although she had enjoyed winning, she was a true believer and took the lessons of the WSA and its adage "good sportsmanship is greater than victory" to heart—Trudy was the ultimate good sport.

  Handley, however, couldn't help but notice that Trudy was an entirely different swimmer than she had been only a few months earlier when she had been training indoors, an environment she had never been particularly fond of. But after spending the better part of two months swimming for hours every day in the Highlands, Trudy was simply in much better shape than the other swimmers.

  Even though she was younger than either Wainwright or Riggin, Trudy had an entirely different body than either, more stoutly built, with broader shoulders. And now Handley noticed that she simply swam differently than most of the other girls. Even in longer races, most swimmers started out fast, in a near full sprint, then, as their bodies tired, they slowed over the course of the race, like a toy boat with a propeller powered by a twisted rubber band. Trudy, Handley noted, demonstrated a different approach. Although she lacked the pure sprinter's speed of swimmers such as Wainwright and Riggin, once she got going, Trudy didn't slow down. She was able to maintain a much faster pace for much, much longer, making her something of sprinting tortoise to everyone else's panting hare. She swam as if she needn't ever stop and maintained the same pace almost indefinitely, as if she simply turned a dial to the desired speed and then took off.

  Handley's challenge was to harness her newfound strength and refine her stroke to take advantage of her stamina and make her competitive over shorter distances. As Meg had long known, Trudy needed a little pushing. For much of the past year Meg realized that her sister was the better swimmer, but something seemed to hold her back. Trudy was not lazy, but at times she simply seemed unaware of anything outside herself, perhaps as a result of her hearing problem and her tendency to turn inward. Trudy herself also found it a little hard to believe that after a lifetime of chasing after Meg in the water, she could now beat her sister with ease. Meg had to assure her again and again that it was okay.

  Unlike most athletes, Trudy was not primarily motivated by her own ego or quest for personal glory—her win during the Day Cup had been something of an accident, but she'd been thrilled afterward to discover how excited her win had made Meg and other members of her family. She craved only the approval of others, and now that both Meg and Mr. Handley were telling her she could do more and asking her to do more, she was determined not to let them down.

  It was almost funny. All Handley had to do was ask Trudy to concentrate a little more, increase her pace a little bit, push herself a little harder, and she did, instantly. In fact, he was almost a little embarrassed by her success, realizing that he had probably been underestimating her all along. A few words of praise—"Very good, Miss Ederle. Fine job."—went a long, long way.

  Handley was astonished at how quickly she seemed to improve, but not completely surprised. The years he had spent as a teacher of swimming had taught him that at times during adolescence, as their bodies quickly change, athletes can make sudden and extreme changes. Many lose their coordination almost overnight. With Trudy, however, the opposite was happening. Over the course of one summer her body seemed to mature, becoming stronger and more muscular. Combined with her new focus and desire to win the approval of her family and coaches, she had completely changed. It was as if she was coming out of her cocoon and using her wings for the first time.

  On August 27 at Seaside Park in Bridgeport, Connecticut, the world of swimming began to find out exactly what that meant. Despite the fact that she had never before competed in a national championship, Trudy was entered in the national 220-yard freestyle swim, an event that was supposed to include both Hilda James and Helen Wainwright. This time, however, it was Helen Wainwright who was forced to withdraw before the event. Long exposure to the water had left her with a painful ear infection, and there was some concern that she might have to undergo an operation. Her absence made James the heavy favorite at the start of the race. No one, apart from Handley perhaps, and Meg, had any idea just how good Trudy Ederle had become.

  It was no contest. After the first few strokes Trudy settled into a rapid pace that James, even at the start, could neither match nor maintain. Ederle moved through the water almost mechanically, each stroke identical to the last, her speed never wavering, as James slowly and inexorably dropped back. Trudy finished the race in 2 minutes 49 Vs seconds, three seconds faster than the old mark set by Thelda Bleibtrey. James, who only one month before had held the title as the best female swimmer in the world, wasn't even close. Although she finished in second place, she splashed her way to the finish line more than thirteen seconds behind Trudy. It was humiliating.

  The win put Ederle—and women's swimming—back in the headlines. The three-way competition between James, Wainwright, and Ederle was starting to attract some attention. In the world of women's swimming it was as if the baseball Yankees, Giants, and Dodgers were all fighting for the pennant together for the first time.

  The WSA was wise enough to recognize what was taking place. Never before had there been so much interest in the group, or its swimmers. Before the summer swimming season ended and James returned to England, the group decided to take full advantage of the public's growing fascination with its sport and its three best-known swimmers by holding a special Labor Day competition at Brighton Beach to include 50-yard and 100-yard freestyle races, fancy diving, and, most significantly, a special 500-meter invitation race that would include Ederle, Wainwright, and James.

  Although the weather forecast that day called for partly cloudy conditions with gentle, variable winds and a temperature of near eighty degrees, weather forecasting was an inexact science. By midmorning New York and Long Island were experiencing a slow-moving, almost tropical downpour, marked by distant thunder and occasional flashes of lightning. At Brighton Beach worried WSA officials pondered canceling the swim meet.

  Then the crowd started to arrive, first in a trickle and then, like the rain, in a torrent. Despite the poor weather more than two thousand spectators—mothers and daughters and fathers and sons—braved the elements, carrying umbrellas and wearing raincoats and slickers. Once again they pushed their way to poolside, surrounding the seventy-five-foot pool in a crowd that in places was more than fifty people deep, all standing patiently as the rain pounded down and a surprisingly cool wind whipped the waters of the pool, at times nearly raising white caps on its surface.

  Charlotte Epstein and other WSA officials looked to the sky and virtually pleaded with the rains to stop, for they knew that if the race were not held, an important opportunity would likely slip away, for in only a few short weeks it would be impossible to hold a swim meet outdoors. Fortunately, just as it appeared that they might have to cancel the meet, the rains ended. Although it remained overcast, the thunder and lightning slowly dissipated. The race would go on.

  Since Helen Wainwright was also scheduled to compete in the "fancy diving" event, the 500-meter swim was the first scheduled race. As the swimmers warmed up, four capable officials, led by Louis Handley, staked out positions staggered alongside the pool. They were meticulous in their planning. The race was destined to be a record setter, for there was, as yet, no official women's record for the 500-meter freestyle. Along the way, given the stren
gth of the field, everyone expected at least a few other records to fall, and officials were determined to time the swimmers at various intervals in both yards and meters. While it was easy enough simply to count laps in the twenty-five-yard pool to time the swimmers over every fifty- or one-hundred-yard interval, doing so in meters as well took some calculations. At various points one or more of the timers would have to change position alongside the pool as various distances were eclipsed.

  Of course the whole business of swimming records was something of a mess. Claims of American and world records were just that—claims—until they were verified and accepted by the AAU and the International Record Committee, which set standards concerning the methodology used to measure time and distances. But as yet there was no agreement on a standardized set of competition distances, meaning that in virtually any race that included some of the nations' best swimmers it was possible to claim some kind of new record, depending on factors such as the distance of the race, whether the race was held indoors or outdoors, the length of the pool, and other variables.

  From race to race, however, conditions varied widely and rendered many of these marks almost meaningless. The competitive environments for races held in closed pools, ocean pools, and open water all varied wildly, and a world record set in one environment was not remotely the same as one set in another—a 100-yard race held in the open ocean was not the same as one held in a twenty-yard indoor pool or a fifty-yard ocean pool. In reality, the only standard that really meant anything was a swimmer's record in head-to-head competition versus other swimmers, on the same day, under the same conditions, in the same race.

  On this day Trudy Ederle, Hilda James, and Helen Wainwright were the only swimmers invited to compete in the 500-meter invitational. At the end of the race the better swimmer would be obvious to everyone. As each girl took her place before her lane at the end of the pool, the crowd cheered and clapped in anticipation.