Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World (25 page)

Well, not quite. Trudy swam as if she hadn't a care in world and was never challenged in the race. She beat Wainwright by five yards, establishing a new world record in 1 minute 58⅗ seconds.

At the end of the trials Trudy, along with other notable WSA members such as Wainwright and Riggin, was one of twenty-four American women named to the women's team. Apart from two female fencers, they were the only American female athletes going to Paris. While only one-third of the squad was made up of girls from the WSA, with only a few exceptions they represented the best swimmers of the lot. Most of the other picks for the team were made for political reasons, a payback for donations, to appease other swim clubs, and to placate AAU officials.

Neither Trudy nor anyone else had much time to celebrate. The boat to France was scheduled to leave in a week. They'd be gone for over a month, and Trudy had lots of packing to do. As with every other member of the team, the notion of spending weeks in Paris was absolutely intoxicating to her. But before she left, the AOC milked her popularity one more time. Only two days before the team left for Paris, on June 14, the AOC held a special water carnival for both male and female Olympians at the Olympic pool in Long Beach.

The weather was terrible again, with cold winds and rain more reminiscent of March than June, conditions that once again put a smile on Trudy's face and a song on her lips. Trudy raced in a 100-yard event against only one other swimmer, her own teammate, Martha Norelius, winning in a time of 1 minute 7⅖ seconds. But the highlight of the day was a rare 160-yard mixed relay featuring members of both the men's and women's team—usually, men and women didn't even compete at the same meet, much less in the same event, but the AOC was eager to cash in on its two biggest stars, Trudy and Johnny Weissmuller. Both swimmers were put on the same team, Trudy swimming the third, forty-yard leg while Weissmuller swam anchor, a relay dream team. But despite the presence of both Ederle and Weissmuller on the same squad, they lost to the team anchored by Hawaiian champion swimmer and surfing legend Duke Kahanamoku. For Trudy Ederle the race was perhaps the first sign that the Olympics would not go quite as planned.

The next day the entire U.S. Olympic team of more than three hundred athletes assembled on the USS
America,
a steam-powered cruise ship leased by the AOC at the cost of $160, 000 to transport the American team to France for the games. Six hundred and ninety-nine feet from stem to stern, the vessel, which had a capacity of more than 1, 600 passengers, had been the largest ship in the world when it was first launched in 1905.

Yet the ship always sailed under something of a black cloud. Built for the German Hamburg line, the ship was initially called the
Amerika
and for nearly a decade traveled back and forth across the North Atlantic without incident—some of Trudy's German relatives immigrated to the United States on the same vessel. But on April 14, 1912, while sailing in the North Atlantic, the ship's captain noted the presence of two large icebergs. He transmitted a message to the U.S. Hydrological Office in Washington noting the position of the icebergs and remained vigilant—he knew a run-in with an iceberg could be catastrophic.

Tragically the message was never forwarded to the bridge of the
Titanic,
which struck the icebergs a short time later and sank. Then, a few months later while sailing through the English Channel, the
Amerika
inadvertently struck an English submarine, sinking the vessel and killing fifteen of sixteen crew members. During the war the United States confiscated the boat while it was docked in Boston, renamed it the
America,
and used it as a troop transport. It sank in an accident while at dock, was then repaired and updated, and was put back into service after the war as a cruise ship for the United States Lines, only to burn in 1926 and end its useful life back in military service as a floating barracks and troop transport.

In 1924, despite the fact that it was still one of the best-known passenger ships in the world, the
America
would not prove lucky for Trudy Ederle. Even on their own boat, Trudy and her fellow Olympians were treated something like second-class citizens, for in addition to the more than three hundred athletes on board, they were joined by several hundred officials, trainers, chaperones, journalists, photographers, coaches, and various other VIPs, including film stars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, and General Douglas MacArthur, whose courageous performance in World War I made him the most decorated American solider of the war. The VIPs received the spacious staterooms and prime accommodations on the ship, while the athletes were given the equivalent of second- and third-class quarters.

For the first time ever, the American press and public were taking the Olympics seriously, viewing the games as a measure of American athletic prowess and a source of national pride. That hadn't been the case in 1920—the Antwerp Olympic Games had taken place while both the United States and Europe were still reeling and recovering from the war and the pandemic of the Spanish influenza. But by 1924 the whole world appeared to be looking forward—the now-familiar Olympic motto,
Citius, altius, fortius
(Faster, Higher, Stronger), was being used for the first time and was emblematic of the unabashed optimism and confidence each nation was trying to project.

On June 16 New York pulled out all the stops and gave the Olympians a memorable send-off. Trudy was seen off by dozens of friends and family members. Tugs and fireboats escorted the
America
out of New York Harbor beneath a fusillade of bellowing horns and cascades of water. Both sides of the ship were emblazoned with the words "American Olympic Team," in oversize script as if the size of the letters alone would be enough to intimidate athletes from the rest of the world. Absolutely everyone expected the
America
and her cargo to return bearing perhaps a hundred medals or more, many of them gold. American observers handicapping the games pronounced American athletes as the favorites in nearly every event.

No athlete was expected to be more dominant than Trudy Ederle. After two years of near total supremacy, the Olympics presented her with the perfect opportunity to provide an exclamation point to her remarkable career. And at age seventeen the Olympics would likely mark the end of that career as well, for it was unlikely that she would retain her amateur status much longer. Although a few Olympians, for example, Riggin and Wainwright, had been on the 1920 team, they had been schoolgirls at the time. Competitive swimming was a young woman's sport—virtually the entire team was under the age of twenty. It wasn't realistic to think that Trudy would still be competing in another four years. Thelda Bleibtrey accepted a coaching job after the 1920 games, which made her a "professional" under the standards then in place, and Trudy was likely to do the same. For Trudy, the games would in all probability be both the peak and the end of her career. No other athlete in the world entered the Olympics with higher expectations.

Trudy felt the pressure. She was at her peak and knew that in order to win she needed to maintain both her concentration and her fitness level. But from the instant the ship left New York Harbor, there was trouble. For the next nine days Trudy and the other athletes struggled to maintain their fitness and mental focus.

Olympic officials tried their best to enforce discipline and keep the athletes on a schedule, occupying their time with training and trying to keep them busy, but they had little experience running a floating gymnasium and athletic facility. While virtually the entire deck was used for training exercises, some participants found it easier to adapt than others.

The runners had it best. The deck of the ship was expansive enough to accommodate both sprinters and long-distance runners, and they could continue their training under conditions that were almost as good as those on dry land. Both the boxing and wrestling teams were able to train under conditions not dissimilar to those in a gymnasium—the boxers were provided with heavy bags, speed bags, and a ring for sparring, while the wrestlers were provided with mats for training. The fencing team had little difficulty finding room to continue their exercises, and even the pole vaulters and high jumpers were able to stay in shape, using the deck and leaping onto cushions.

Competitors in other field sports, however, had a more difficult time. Discus and shot put competitors aimed their training tosses at canvas sheets above stacks of mattresses but had to chase down errant throws before they rolled off the deck and into the sea. For safety reasons, however, javelin throwers weren't allowed to throw the spear on deck. Nevertheless, they managed to find a way. Bill Neufeld, who finished in fifth place in the javelin throw at the games, later recalled that team members attached "a 300-foot string [to the javelin] and we would throw until we reached the end of the string," tossing the javelin off the deck into the water at the back of the ship, the opposite direction that the ship was traveling. Since the ship was steaming toward Europe at fifteen knots, the athletes joked that each throw was a world record. After retrieving the javelins the athletes checked the tip, looking for blood, as their imaginations ran wild and they imagined themselves to be harpooners hunting whales and sharks.

But Trudy and the swimming and diving team were not so fortunate. Despite being surrounded by water, the
America,
unlike some more modern passenger ships of the era, was not equipped with a pool, and it was both far too dangerous and too costly to stop the ship in the middle of the ocean to allow swimmers and divers to swim in the ocean. Instead of a pool, the divers were provided with a low springboard and an enormous pile of cushions. During training each diver wore a safety belt and was supported by ropes held by teammates to prevent them from springing headlong onto the deck. The divers would leap from the board and hope their companions managed to hang on and help break their fall. If nothing else their arms and shoulders got a workout trying to keep each other from breaking their necks.

Back on land, training under Mr. Handley, Trudy was, by now, accustomed to the routine. Although she still didn't particularly care to swim indoors, she had grown to accept it. Handley still had Trudy and all his swimmers continue doing drills out of the water, but there was increased focus on their performance in the water, as Handley would have the girls alternate longer, slower swims, in which they focused almost entirely on their form, with timed trials. As they swam, Handley would walk alongside the pool calling out their times and encouraging them to either slow down or speed up, trying to teach each swimmer to monitor herself and reach the appropriate pace, for once they were in a race, they wouldn't be able to depend on him to set their pace.

All that was impossible on the boat. Trudy and the other swimmers could get wet, but that was about all. The "pool" was made of a sheet of canvas that sat in a wood timber frame, measuring about ten feet square and about four feet deep, filled with salt water.

Each time Trudy went to work out, she had to undergo the same awkward process. Each day the pool was filled with seawater and each day each girl trained under the watchful eye of Lou Handley according to a schedule that gave each swimmer on the team, male and female, the same amount of time in the water regardless of his or her chance at winning a medal. With twenty-four members of the women's team and more than thirty male swimmers all needing to stay in condition, each competitor was able to work out in the water for less than a half hour a day, hardly adequate for conditioning purposes. It mattered not that Trudy, who was competing in three events, probably should have received extra time in the water—Handley was scrupulously fair and treated every girl the same.

Each day, Trudy and another swimmer—usually Helen Wainwright—would don their suits and report to the pool at the appointed time. As one pair of swimmers left the water, another pair would get in. In a scene reminiscent of the day Trudy first learned to swim at the Highlands, after climbing into the pool each swimmer would don an elastic belt that was attached to the side of the pool by ropes that held her in place, creating a kind of primitive "endless pool." As the girls swam in place Handley would try to approximate race conditions, describing the scene, timing each stroke and marking off distances—"You have fifty meters to go. Let's pep up your stroke."

It was barely adequate and, in fact, might even have even been detrimental. The swimmers were immersed in salt water, which gave them greater buoyancy than the fresh water they would swim in at the games and most, like Trudy, had spent the past few months swimming almost exclusively in fresh water. The belt was not only uncomfortable but caused chafing and forced the girls to alter their stroke. Moreover, Trudy was accustomed to swimming for hours each day. Now, by the time she had warmed up and become accustomed to the belt, practice was over. For the first time in her life, swimming was a chore.

It had been years, since before her family moved to the Highlands, that Trudy had spent such little time in the water. At a time when she should have been peaking, she was, literally, just treading water. As each day slipped by her hard fought confidence in her own ability—and her level of physical fitness—began to slip. Although she was friendly with the other members of the team, she missed Meg. Her sister kept Trudy from turning inside herself and kept her spirits high. Now, without Meg's pep talks, Trudy's self-assurance began to waver.

Trudy and the other swimmers tried to stay in shape by walking the deck, but there was a limit to just how much walking a young woman or young man could do before going batty, and it was hard to stay focused during the long journey. As the trip went on, many Olympians found they were more and more easily distracted. There were, after all, more than three hundred male athletes and, including the two fencers, only twenty-six females, primarily attractive teenagers, plus a handful of female chaperones, like Charlotte Epstein. The result was a lot of unchecked testosterone. The female athletes found themselves the object of a great deal of attention—some of which they encouraged, and some they did not. A few of the girls ran the chaperones ragged as they snuck off to distant corners of the ship, basking in the attention, while others tended to hole up in their cabins to keep unwanted interest to a minimum.