Ederle “Trudy” Gertrude

The 1920’s was the “Golden Age” of sports and the time for many successful athletes, both men and women!!!! Depending on what sports were played during the time, people in society could tell how wealthy you were by how much you bet on a certain sport.

There was Babe Ruth the,”…Greatest baseball player to ever live”

There was Jack Dempsey who started out homeless and rose to become the world’s heavyweight champion of the world during the time.

There was “Red Grange” who made history in the football world as one of the most remarkable amateur and professional of all.

There was also Bill Tilden who, “…was to tennis what Babe Ruth was to baseball.”

But there also the woman who said woman could do what men said they couldn’t…Gertrude Ederle.

Gertrude “Trudy” Ederle was the world’s first woman to swim the English channel also breaking the record of the fastest man. Trudy had 17 top records in the English channel.

When Trudy won it was her second attempt at swimming the English channel. Her first time she was engulfed in sea water, she stopped to spit it out. Her trainer feared she was collapsing and sent out a swimmer to take her out.

Fame did not last long for Trudy soon after her retirement, a young girl broke her English channel records.

Over the years, Trudy the world was not good to her. Her hearing, which was impaired since childhood and was further damaged by her Channel swim, eventually deteriorated into deafness.

Ederle suffered a fall in 1933 that injured her spine; she was forced to wear casts for years. Nineteen neurologists said she would never walk again

Gertrue “Trudy” Ederle helped lay to rest the notion that a competitive female athlete was an impossibility. 

Ederle, Gertrude

“They said women couldn’t swim the channel, today I proved we could.”