Florence May Chadwick

Florence May Chadwick ( born November 9, 1918 in San Diego, † March 15, 1995 ibid ) was an American long-distance swimmer and the first woman who swam the English Channel in both directions.

Chadwick grew up in San Diego and won ten years old her first swimming competition by the first child of the San Diego Bay swam. On August 8, 1950, she swam across the English Channel between Cap Gris -Nez and Dover over a length of 32 kilometers in 13 hours and 20 minutes, so they broke the hitherto held by the American Gertrude Ederle record. A year later, in September 1951, she swam across the channel in the other direction - from Dover to Sangatte - and needed 16 hours and 22 minutes. In the following years she repeated this route two more times.

In 1952 she started at the age of 34 years trying to be the first woman to swim the distance of the 34 km westerly of California Catalina Island to Palos Verdes on the California coast. Thick fog and the ice-cold water put her so that she gave a half-mile from the target. In an attempt little later she was with a time of 13 hours, 47 minutes and 32 seconds and successfully broke the passing record since 1927 of a male swimmer.

1953 she swam the Bosphorus, the Dardanelles and the Strait of Gibraltar, the latter in 5 hours and 6 minutes, which in turn was faster than the previously held record of a man. In 1954, she tried to be the first man to swim across Lake Ontario at the widest point, but had to retire again, while it succeeded the next day its competitor, the Canadian Marilyn Bell.

In 1944, she played with her ​​teammate Esther Williams, a supporting role in the film Bathing Beauty ( " The Bathing Venus "). She was unmarried. Professionally, she worked as a stockbroker and worked in later years Vice -President of the First Wall Street Corp..

In 1970, she was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the international swimming sport.