August 6th, 1926: was the day that, Gertrude Caroline Ederle, became the first woman to swim across the English Channel in a time of 14-hours, 39-minutes. The fastest time over the previous five men who had swam it.From Wikipedia:
After reading the article it seems to me that swimming was once held in higher regard than that of football or basketball during the depression. Coming out of that generation the world embraced Johnnie Weismuller as Tarzan, Esther Williams and her swim movies, and perhaps others.
Gertrude Caroline Ederle (October 23, 1905 – November 30, 2003) was an American competitive swimmer. In 1926, she became the first woman to swim across the English Channel.
She trained at the Women's Swimming Association, which produced such competitors as Eleanor Holm and Esther Williams. She joined the club when she was only thirteen. From this time Gertrude began to break and establish more amateur records than any other woman in the world.
At the 1924 Summer Olympics, she won a gold medal as a part of the US 400-meter freestyle relay team and bronze medals for finishing third in the 100-meter and 400-meter freestyle races.
When Ederle returned home, she was greeted with a ticker-tape parade in New York City. She went on to play herself in a movie (Swim Girl, Swim) and tour the vaudeville circuit, including Billy Rose's Aquacade. She met President Coolidge and had a song and a dance step named for her. Unfortunately, her manager, through a combination of incompetence and duplicity, mishandled her showbiz career and Ederle failed to reap the rewards she deserved. She was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1965.
[Oh, I have to throw this in: Coach Ahelee of Mision Viejo Aquatics swam it too.]
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What changed the Zeitgeist.
