Swimming · 1926 · English Channel
The First Woman to Swim the Channel
An American swimmer becomes the first woman to swim the English Channel, beating the existing men's record by nearly two hours and returning home to the largest ticker-tape parade New York had ever staged.
14 hours 34 minutes
Time
~2 hours
Beat existing (men's) record by
First woman to swim the English Channel
Distinction
Gertrude Ederle, already an Olympic medallist and former world record holder in freestyle swimming, attempted the roughly 21-mile crossing of the English Channel in 1926 after a failed attempt the previous year. Wearing a homemade two-piece swimsuit, a radical departure from the era's more restrictive swimwear, and coated in grease against the cold, she set out from France on 6 August.
She completed the crossing in 14 hours and 34 minutes, becoming the first woman ever to swim the Channel and beating the existing men's record by nearly two hours, a margin that stunned a public which had widely assumed the achievement was beyond a woman's physical capability.
Ederle returned to New York to a ticker-tape parade larger than any the city had staged before, reportedly drawing crowds in the millions, and became one of the most famous women in America virtually overnight. Her swim is credited as a landmark moment for women's sport broadly, directly challenging assumptions about female athletic capability that had gone largely unchallenged before her.
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