Daisy Ridley trained for months to play first woman to swim English Channel

Enlarge / Daisy Ridley stars as Gertrude “Trudy” Ederle in The Young Woman and the Sea. (credit: Walt Disney Studios)

In August 1926, American champion swimmer Gertrude “Trudy” Ederle became the first woman to swim the English Channel, completing the 21-mile feat in 14 hours and 34 minutes—a record that would stand until 1950. She was just a few months shy of her 21st birthday. It’s the kind of classic sports story tailor-made for the silver screen, and Disney has obliged with its new biopic The Young Woman and the Sea, starring Daisy Ridley as Ederle.

The daughter of a butcher in Manhattan, Ederle learned to swim in New Jersey and joined the Women’s Swimming Association (WSA) at the age of 12. She quickly excelled at the American crawl stroke, setting the world record in the 880-yard freestyle that same year—the youngest swimmer to do so. She would go on to hold 29 US national and world records between 1921 and 1925. She competed in the 1924 Summer Olympics, winning gold in the 4×100 meter relay and bronze medals in two other individual races.

After her Olympic triumph, Ederle became a professional swimmer, completing the 22 miles between Battery Park to Sandy Hook in 7 hours and 11 minutes in 1925. Her nephew would later describe it as a “warm-up” for swimming the English Channel. The WSA sponsored Ederle’s first attempt that same year, but her trainer, Jabez Wolffe, ordered her pulled from the water, disqualifying the attempt. Ederle was angry about that decision and found a new coach in Bill Burgess for her second attempt. This time she succeeded and was rewarded with a ticker-tape parade in Manhattan with some 2 million people cheering her on.