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America's Best Girl
With historic swim, Gertrude Ederle became an icon of sport's Golden Age
Posted: Wednesday December 3, 2003 10:57AM; Updated: Wednesday December 3, 2003 4:53PM
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Let us sum up Gertrude Ederle, who died Sunday at
age 98, with a simple comparison. The international
sports event of the television age that has meant the
most to America is the U.S. hockey team's triumph in
the 1980 Olympics. But when 20-year-old Trudy
became the first woman to swim the English Channel
on Aug. 6, 1926 -- beating the five men who had
previously done so and topping the record by more
than two hours -- it meant as much, even more.
Gertrude Ederle did it all by herself. And she did it at a
time when women were barely tolerated in athletics.
The country went crazy for her. Irving Berlin wrote a
song, Trudy. Two million people lined the Manhattan
streets for her ticker-tape parade. The irrepressible
mayor of New York, Jimmy Walker, summed up her
feat with just a sprig of hyperbole: "... they will speak
of Moses crossing the Red Sea, Caesar crossing the
Rubicon and Washington crossing the Delaware, but
frankly, your crossing of the [English] Channel must
take a place alongside these." At the White House,
President Calvin Coolidge, a man of somewhat fewer
words, simply called her "America's Best Girl." At the
end of that year, sports polls placed Trudy ahead of
Babe Ruth and all the other sports icons of the
Golden Age.
Indeed, it was almost another half-century before
another woman athlete would draw as much adulation
Gertrude Ederle was the first woman to
-- and Billie Jean King only had to beat an old man
swim the English Channel in 1926.
at tennis. Ederle conquered one of the trickiest bodies
of water on earth. In its 40 million years, only five
human beings of the hundreds who had tried had
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bested what the French call La Manche, the sleeve -112 miles across at the biceps, 21 at the cuff, from
Calais to Dover. Because of the currents, Ederle had to swim 35 miles of churning 60-degree water.
AP
The phonograph on one of the tugboats that escorted her played, mostly, two songs: Let Me Call You
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Sweetheart and Yes, We Have No Bananas. Sometimes she sang along, until her father, on the boat,
suggested she might better conserve her energy.
Her time of 14 hours and 31 minutes was by far the fastest ever. But even more: a woman had beat all
men in sport. When before had that happened? When since?
Ederle was no one-shot wonder, either. She'd set a number of world records before her Channel swim,
and she'd won one gold medal and one bronze at the 1924 Olympics. But what relatively small amounts
of money she was able to make off the Channel swim cost her her amateurism and any more real glory.
Besides, there's only one Channel to swim, one Everest to climb. Anyway, she'd always been bashful, and
childhood measles had probably caused hearing problems that, with age, turned into real deafness. Over
time, Ederle withdrew and was mostly forgotten.
But hers remains one of the grand achievements in sport. In the midst of the Channel, the waves high,
the water cold, the Portuguese men-of-war biting her, her father screamed: "Quit, Gertrude, quit." From
the swells came back only two words: "What for?" That's all. What for? And on Gertrude Ederle swam to
the beach at Kingstown on the English coast.
Sports Illustrated senior contributing writer Frank Deford is a regular contributor to SI.com and appears
each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition. He is a longtime correspondent for HBO's
Real Sports and his new novel, An American Summer (Sourcebooks Trade), is available at bookstores
everywhere.
Find this article at:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2003/writers/frank_deford/12/03/viewpoint
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Copyright � 2007 CNN/Sports Illustrated.
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