Ethelda Bleibtrey

Ethelda Bleibtrey (born February 27, 1902, Waterford, New York, U.S.—died May 6, 1978, West Palm Beach, Florida) was an American swimmer who overcame polio to win three gold medals at the 1920 Olympic Games in Antwerp.

Bleibtrey began swimming as therapy to counteract the effects of polio. Because she swam without stockings in 1919, she was given a summons for “nude swimming”; the subsequent public support for Bleibtrey led to the abandonment of stockings as a conventional element in women’s swimwear. By the 1920 Olympics she held the world record in the backstroke. Since the Olympics had no backstroke event for women, she entered the only three races open to women that year. Despite having to compete under difficult conditions in a tidal estuary, she set a world record for the 100-meter freestyle race in the third heat, then set a new world record of 1 min 13.6 sec in the final race. She set another world record (4 min 34 sec) in the 300-meter freestyle. Her third gold medal came in the 4 × 100-meter relay, which the U.S. team won in 5 min 11.6 sec.

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Bleibtrey won every national American swimming championship from 50 yards to long distance (three miles) and never lost a race during her amateur career. In 1922 she turned professional. She was credited with rescuing a woman and her two sons in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island, in 1925. Three years later she was arrested for swimming in the Central Park reservoir while demonstrating for more public swimming facilities in New York City. She spent much of her life teaching swimming to disabled children. In 1967 Bleibtrey was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame. A children’s picture book about her life, Splash!: Ethelda Bleibtrey Makes Waves of Change (by Elisa Boxer), was published in 2022.