Free Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World by Glenn Stout

swim and then taught basic lifesaving techniques by the USVLSC. Using the breaststroke, the young women of the USVLSC learned to swim one hundred yards or more, support struggling swimmers, safely dive into the water, and free-dive to depths approaching fifty feet. The group touted its efforts in silent films and newspaper articles and held public exhibitions and races to attract new members. On occasion, women members were allowed to participate, and they proved so popular that the group began holding occasional "water shows" featuring female members. Epstein, although not the best swimmer in the group, was competitive, excelling at deep diving and relays. But this first generation of women swimmers soon became frustrated by the league. The "water shows" trivialized their skills—the women weren't allowed to swim long distances and often competed in relay races in which each woman swam only thirty yards or so.
    There seemed to be little opportunity within the group to change that. The open chauvinism and prejudice that prevented women not only from competing in sports, but from breaking a sweat anywhere but in the kitchen had become institutionalized in the United States, a factor that had its roots in the 1890s, when the Olympic movement was still in its infancy. Olympic founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin of France adamantly opposed the participation of women. Like most men of his time, particularly those involved in athletics, de Coubertin found the notion of a woman competing in athletics physically dangerous for such delicate flowers and morally offensive as well, once stating that women athletes simply did not create a "proper spectacle." De Coubertin himself personally selected the members of the first International Olympic Committee (IOC), and although not all shared his outlook in regard to women, many did, and de Coubertin found a powerful and important ally in American committeeman James Sullivan.
    Sullivan was the founder of the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), then the preeminent governing body of virtually all amateur sports in America, a position the group would hold for decades. Together, even as the membership of the IOC started to act independently, the two men managed to keep women from participating in sports in any meaningful way both in the United Sates and elsewhere in the world, as the IOC authorized only nominal competition for women in "proper spectacles" such as golf, yachting, tennis, archery, and figure skating.
    That was it. Apart from these few pursuits and the sporadic, unorganized efforts of individual female athletes, like Boston's Eleanora Randolph Sears, who garnered headlines for long-distance walking, not only were women kept away from athletics, but they might as well have been kept locked up in a separate room away from all sporting activity. For all intents and purposes there were no women athletes in the United States, no organized sports programs for women, and, apparently, little chance of that ever changing. Most men
and
women believed that strenuous exercise was not only inappropriate for a woman of good standing, but physically dangerous.
    But in 1912, much to the dismay of both de Coubertin and Sullivan, the IOC broke ranks and elected to add women's swimming as an official sport. At the 1912 games in Stockholm, Sweden, women competed in both the 100-meter freestyle swim and the 4-by-100 freestyle relay. But France and the United States stubbornly refused to accept the decision. De Coubertin was the reason France chose not to participate, and James Sullivan, who served as AAU president from 1906 to 1908 and then became executive secretary, managed to block American participation. The AAU oversaw the selection of the American Olympic team, and Sullivan simply would not allow women to join the AAU, thus effectively preventing American women from competing, not only in swimming, but in any sport for as long as he was in charge.

    In 1911, while Annette Kellerman was attracting all the