Tonight on Rai1 in prime time ‘The Girl from the Sea’, Disney movies 2024 where Daisy Ridley (Rey from ‘Star Wars’) plays Trudy Ederle, an American swimming star. Olympic champion, holder of 5 world records, she was the first woman to swim across the English Channel.
The plot of the film
New York, 1914. After having a vision, young Trudy Ederle decides to devote her life to swimming. In an era dominated by men and prejudice, Trudy is determined to overcome all limitations and achieve legendary feats, changing her destiny and inspiring the women of the future. D
The true story of Trudy Ederle
Born in New York in 1905, Gertrude (aka ‘Trudy’) Ederle was the daughter of immigrants: His mother and father are from Germany. He was the one who insisted that his daughters learn to swim, because he didn’t want to risk them drowning if they were in the sea. And Trudy had been studying since childhood, but without great enthusiasm: it was only at the age of 15 that she started training for the first time and it soon became clear that she was much faster than her classmates from the New York Women’s Swimming Association.
He accumulated many victories in speed swimming, so much so that in 1924 he was part of the US national team that participated in the Paris Olympics. He returned from the French capital with three medals around his neck: two bronzes, in the 100 and 400 meter freestyle events, and one gold (won with three teammates in the 4×100 meter freestyle relay). Although much success was achieved in the speed specialty, Gertrude showed increasing interest in cross-country swimming, in the stormy waters of the open sea.
First attempt it occurred on June 15, 1925, when he dived into the cold waters of New York Bay and, starting from Manhattan, arrived at Sandy Hooks, New Jersey, covering a distance of 21 miles (about 34 km) in 7 hours and 11 minutes. This is a new absolute record, for both men and women.
In just two months he tried for the first time Channel Strait crossingwhich failed because his trainer, Jabez Wolffe, stopped him when he was getting good at it, concerned about the violent coughing that caused him to swallow large amounts of salt water. A choice Ederle would always state he did not share. This is why the following year he tried again, accompanied by other technicians, and on 6 August 1926 he reached the coast of France. This was an incredible achievement: Trudy Ederle, in addition to being the first woman able to cross the English Channel, with the recorded time (14 hours 34 minutes to cover a distance of 35 miles) broke the record set in 1923 by Enrico Tiraboschi.
On August 27, 1926 he returned to New York where he was greeted with a parade and US President John Calvin Coolidge opened the doors of the White House for him. Since then she reinvented herself many times: she worked in cinema, playing herself in the film ‘The School of Mermaids’ in 1927, she appeared at the Universal Exhibition in New York in 1939 and when she became completely deaf (she had hearing problems since she was a child due to measles) she taught swimming to deaf children.
She died on November 30, 2003, at the age of 97, in Wyckoff (New Jersey), remembered as one of the greatest expressions of female swimming.
