Gertrude Ederle
The first woman to swim the English Channel, nearly two hours faster than any man before her
Gertrude Ederle grew up above her father's butcher shop on the west side of Manhattan and learned to swim in the river at the family's summer place in New Jersey. Measles as a child had damaged her hearing, and doctors told her that swimming would make it worse. She swam anyway. By her late teens she held a string of world records, and at the Paris Olympics in 1924 she won a gold in the relay and two bronzes, results she considered a failure.
Only five men had swum the English Channel, and no woman. She tried in August 1925 and was pulled from the water after nearly nine hours when her coach, thinking she was in trouble, ordered a companion to touch her, which disqualified her. She said she had been fine. She sacked the coach.
On 6 August 1926 she set out from Cap Gris-Nez in France in rough seas, greased against the cold and wearing a two-piece costume her sister had made and goggles sealed with candle wax. Her new trainer suggested she give up. She asked what for. She landed at Kingsdown in Kent after 14 hours and 34 minutes, almost two hours faster than the men's record. Two million people lined the streets of New York for her parade.
Her hearing failed almost completely afterwards and a fall damaged her spine. She spent years teaching deaf children to swim, and died aged 98.