At the age of eighteen, Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim the English Channel. She covered the distance from Cape Gris-Nex in France to the English coast in fourteen hours, thirty one minutes. Four years earlier, in 1922, Ederle had captured the American woman's long distance swimming championship. Although other attempts were made to swim the Channel, Ederle's time remained a record for twenty four years.