Swimming · 1926 · English Channel
The First Woman to Swim the Channel
An American becomes the first woman to swim the English Channel, beats the men's record by nearly two hours, and comes 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 was already an Olympic medallist and a former world record holder in freestyle swimming when she took on the roughly 21-mile crossing of the English Channel in 1926, a year after a failed attempt. She wore a homemade two-piece swimsuit, a considerable departure from what the era expected women to swim in, coated herself in grease against the cold, and set out from France on 6 August.
She completed the crossing in 14 hours and 34 minutes, the first woman ever to swim the Channel and nearly two hours faster than the existing men's record. A public that had broadly assumed the swim was beyond a woman's physical capability now had a margin of that size to account for.
New York gave her a ticker-tape parade larger than any the city had staged before, reportedly drawing crowds in the millions, and she was one of the most famous women in America inside a week. The assumptions her swim went through had gone largely unchallenged until she was finished with them.
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