Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World (27 page)

Fortunately the pool at Les Tourelles was a gem. The six-lane, fifty-meter Olympic pool surrounded by stands capable of seating more than five thousand spectators was more than adequate for competition. Set on a hillside overlooking Paris, the view was spectacular. For most of the girls it was the finest pool they had ever had the pleasure to use. Unfortunately they saw the pool far more often than they were actually allowed to swim in it.

For nearly two weeks Trudy and many of her teammates slowly fell further out of shape. Lou Handley knew what was happening but was powerless to do much about it. The swimmers from Hawaii had brought along a trainer who specialized in massage, and a few days before the competition began he went to work on Trudy's legs, trying to knead them into shape. But he told her the knots in her thighs and calves felt "like walnuts" beneath his hands—it was too late to do much, and his description made her feel even worse. How could she swim with walnuts for muscles?

As expected, at the team trials Trudy nevertheless earned a spot in both the 100-meter freestyle and the 400-meter relay team—even in diminished condition she was still one of the best swimmers in the world, and the opportunity to swim before so many people initially gave her and the other swimmers a much-needed shot of adrenalin.

Trudy's Olympic Games finally began on July 13. Racing in one of three 400-meter heats, she won her race easily in a time of 6 minutes 12⅕ seconds, but that was nearly twenty seconds slower than her best time over the same distance. The following day she won her semifinal heat without being pressed, but she was even slower, finishing in 6 minutes 23⅘ seconds, still nearly thirty seconds off her best. Nevertheless her two times were still the best times in the trials, and she became one of three Americans, along with Helen Wainwright and Martha Norelius, to qualify for the finals.

But the travel back and forth—and perhaps that lingering injury stemming from her wrestling match with Joie Ray—was beginning to take its toll. By all rights, the 400-meter freestyle was her race—over the past two years she'd never been seriously challenged over the distance, and her performance in the two preliminary heats seemed to indicate that her physical ailments were behind her. News reports confidently predicted an American sweep asking only, "Which American girl will win?" then answering that question by predicting a victory by Trudy with Wainwright likely to finish second ahead of Martha Norelius.

Trudy's strategy in the race was the same as it had always been—if one could criticize her method of competition, it was that it never varied. In most races of any distance she simply ground her opponents down, setting a pace no other swimmer could maintain and then relentlessly pushing on as they dropped back. Thus far no one had ever really been able to keep up. But on this day the plan went awry.

Trudy led early but Martha Norelius, in a surprise, hung with her through the midpoint of the race and then began to pull ahead as Trudy, for the first time in her life, seemed to lack stamina and instead of growing stronger, began to fade. In the final lap, as she fought to keep Norelius within reach, Helen Wainwright, who had trailed both swimmers for the entire race, finished with a flourish. Martha Norelius beat Trudy by almost the length of her body, and Wainwright edged out Ederle for second place by nearly a meter, in a winning time of 6 minutes 2⅕ seconds, faster than Trudy's time in the preliminary, but still far off her best.

Trudy finished third, good enough for the bronze medal, but she was crushed. As soon as she was alone she broke down in tears. The ceremony at the stadium at Colombes, where the girls received their medals and watched the American flag being raised as a band played "The Star-Spangled Banner," helped soften the blow, but the aura of invincibility that she had built over the previous two years was gone, as well as her self-confidence.

Trudy received a measure of revenge the next day, giving the American team a five-yard lead in her opening leg of the 400-meter relay, as the American women swept to victory in 4 minutes 58⅘ seconds, earning Trudy a gold medal, but it was an empty victory, for the American team was so far advanced in comparison to swimmers from the rest of the world that any other swimmer on the American squad could have swum in Trudy's place, and the United States still would have won the gold medal. She was little more than a placeholder, and she knew it. The medal may have been gold on the outside, but to Trudy it seemed like plated tin.

She had one last chance, in the 100-meter freestyle race. Perhaps, she hoped, swimming a shorter distance her tight muscles might not prove to be as much of an impediment as they had been over four hundred meters.

Once again, Trudy easily made it through the preliminary heats and into the finals, as all three American swimmers, Trudy and teammates Mariechen Wehselau of Hawaii and Ethel Lackie, broke the world record in the preliminaries as each girl pushed the other to her best performance. Trudy drew the favored lane three for the finals, and a second gold medal appeared in her grasp—this time an individual award. If she could come away with a second gold medal she could still look at her Olympic experience as a success.

The stands at Les Tourelles were full for the finale, and with all Paris for a backdrop the scene was set for Trudy to end the Olympics on a high note, basking on the victory stand before an adoring crowd of thousands, looking out over Paris, the best female swimmer in the world. At the start she stood poised on the edge of the pool, hands overhead, hoping for a good start.

But there was something wrong with the scene. The race official who held the starting gun stood directly behind Trudy. Although she could easily hear the report of a gun, she could not do so quite as well as if the starter had been offset slightly to either side, and in any race, particularly one over such a short distance that matched three swimmers of nearly the same ability, each millisecond matters.

At the sound of the gun the six swimmers leaped into the water. Five made the initial splash simultaneously. One—Trudy—was a heartbeat late. She was the last swimmer into the water and spent the entire race trying to catch up. Usually, it was the other way around.

She tried to push herself, to send the messages to her muscles that would make her go faster, despite the knots and soreness, but her muscles resisted, and with each stroke she began to tighten up and even panic. For years she had always been able to draw upon reserves of strength and stamina that she seemed to have in abundance, but now, suddenly, all that was gone. Water that had always felt fast and light to her limbs now seemed slow and thick. She was unable to swim automatically, on muscle memory, but had to think, trying to push herself to perform.

Stroke by stroke she fought on, passing the other swimmers to move into third place behind Ethel Lackie and Mariechen Wehselau, then, as she made her turn for the final leg, she could sense that Wehselau was tiring and, inch by inch, Trudy finally began to gain some ground, closing in a rush.

Yet just as she drew abreast of the swimmer, with the end of the pool only a few short yards away, Ethel Lackie surged past both swimmers, and the hand of all three Americans touched the end of the pool in rapid succession. Trudy lifted her head and looked imploringly to the official standing above her, but she could see the verdict in his eyes and in the smiles of the other swimmers. She had finished third. That was worth another bronze medal, but Trudy did not feel as if she had won anything. In a matter of only a few seconds Trudy had seen a possible gold medal slip from her neck and disappear beneath the water. For any other athlete, winning three medals would have been a tremendous accomplishment, but for Trudy it was devastating. For the first time since she had won the Day Cup, Trudy had entered the water and, instead of finding peace, had encountered only disappointment.

She later termed the Olympics "the greatest disappointment of my life," an experience she found so profoundly painful that for the rest of her life she found watching or reading about the Olympics to be a gut-wrenching experience. She identified with the favorites, cheered for them, and prayed for them to meet expectations. "How do they say it?" she later described the experience, "The agony of defeat? When a champion is defeated in the Olympics? I went through that agony every year since. I cry when I watch it. I should have had three golds. I definitely should have."

Her Olympics were over and so too, perhaps, was her swimming career. The one goal she had kept in her sights had eluded her. Now, at age seventeen, what was there left for her to do?

T
HE ONLY WRESTLING
Trudy did on the return trip aboard the
America
was with the voice in her own head that kept asking what had gone wrong.

After her defeat Trudy Ederle initially had precious little time to dwell on her failure. Olympic officials were so worried about leaving young women unoccupied in Paris that after the end of the competition Charlotte Epstein and Louis Handley took the entire team to England, crossing the Channel by boat to swim an exhibition, and then crossing back again to make another appearance in Brussels before returning to Paris for the closing ceremonies and then boarding the
America
for home.

For most of her teammates, the return trip was a nonstop party. Without the pressure of competition they acted like tourists on a cruise, and no one had to worry about staying in shape. But Trudy kept to herself, replaying her races over and over in her head, wondering what had gone wrong and what she possibly could have done about it, but she had no answer. Fortunately, although the Olympics had ended with disappointment for her, America hardly noticed. Despite some pre-Olympic fears by some observers that young American athletes were more concerned with "hot" music, bobbed hairdos, and rising hemlines rather than with the raucous cheers that accompanied falling records, the United States had dominated Olympic competition in very nearly every event, leading all countries with a total of 93 medals, one-quarter of the 361 medals awarded at the games, including 45 golds. In team scoring, the United States was just as dominant, winning the overall championship in eight of the twenty sports—track and field, tennis, rowing, wrestling, shooting, boxing, rugby, and, of course, swimming.

In fact, in the water the United States had been most dominant of all, winning fully 80 percent of all medals, and the women's team failed to win gold in only one event—the 200-meter breaststroke. As the
Literary Digest
noted, quoting the
Pittsburgh Sun,
the victory "indicated that American youth, despite much head shaking and lamentation, is able to hold its own with the youth and stamina of the rest of the world ... It indicates that an age that is commonly said to be going soft is not entirely flabby." As a result, Trudy faced little direct criticism for her personal failure. America had won, so her personal failure was virtually overlooked, but in some ways that was even worse. She had left for Paris as one of the teams' best-known stars but returned as just another competitor.

But in his official report to the AOC, Louis Handley made it clear that as far as he was concerned Trudy's performance was not her fault, but that of the AOC, the result of its poor planning in regard to transportation and accommodations for the women's team. He went out of the way to single out her experience and excuse her performance, the only individual swimmer he so cited. "I cannot say to what extent the track and field men suffered," he wrote, "but I know the swimmers were affected materially. Miss Gertrude Ederle, our reliance for women's freestyle events, went off form completely."

The Olympics had also been something of a checkered experience for both Louis Handley and the WSA. Although the WSA girls had performed relatively well, they hadn't been dominant, a fact that was simultaneously both disappointing and gratifying. While Handley and Epstein had certainly hoped that the WSA girls would win more medals, the fact other American swimmers did so well underscored the impact of the group on women's athletics. All over the country other swimming clubs had used the WSA as a model, and Handley's teaching methods were now standard. Everyone else was rapidly catching up with the WSA. The American crawl had not only utterly transformed the sport, but in doing so it was transforming the way society looked at women. They were beginning to be allowed to be athletes.

Still, for Trudy Ederle life after the Olympics was like diving into a pool and finding out it was filled with only a foot or two of water. For the past two years she had trained and trained hard, but now, with the Olympics over, everyone seemed to be taking a break. Even the WSA had cut back on holding meets and other events. Trudy didn't quite know what to do next. Ever since she had joined the WSA, swimming had been her life, but now it appeared as if sometime soon her life might have to go on without competitive swimming being a part of it. Now that it was gone she suddenly realized just how much she had enjoyed the limelight.

In mid-August she traveled to Boston and retained her national title over the half mile, but the field was weak as other big WSA stars, like Helen Wainwright and other Olympians, were still taking time off. For the rest of the fall and into the early winter, Ederle raced only intermittently, and every day it became just a little bit easier for her to decide to put off her training for another day. Already out of shape upon her return, throughout the fall, without the warm and familiar waters of the Highlands calling her out every day, her condition only deteriorated.

Her swimming career appeared to be slowly winding down. Her WSA teammate Martha Norelius, whose father swam for Sweden at the 1906 Olympics, seemed poised to become the next Gertrude Ederle. At age seventeen, Trudy was not in danger of becoming yesterday's news—in a sense, she already was.