The First Look at 'Young Woman & the Sea' Sees Daisy Ridley Prepare to Make History

Sports are so popular precisely because they remind us of the best humanity is capable of: Impressive feats of athletic prowess and sportsmanship, tales of underdogs triumphing against long odds, and trailblazing figures who become heroes to the rest of us for breaking barriers. However, one of the most impressive athletes in history is a woman you may have never heard of. Gertrude "Trudy" Ederle was the first woman to swim across the English Channel in 1926. But the feature film Young Woman and the Sea aims to change all that.

It stars Daisy Ridley (Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker) as Ederle, the daughter of German immigrants and a member of the U.S. swim team that won gold at the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris in the 4x100 relay. (She also took home a pair of bronze medals in individual events herself). She turned professional in 1925, and that same year she successfully swam from Battery Park, New York to Sandy Hook, New Jersey, and set a record that would stand for 81 years.

In 1926, she decided to take on a new challenge and cross the English Channel, a feat that at that point had never been attempted by a woman. She financed her quest by contracting with two newspapers --- the New York Daily News and the Chicago Tribune --- and selling her story. Though Ederle's first attempt failed, her second, in which she was coached by Bill Burgess, who had himself successfully crossed in 1911, saw her swim the Channel's 21 miles in fourteen and a half hours, beating the fastest man’s existing record by nearly two hours. It was the first time in sporting history that a woman had completed an event in a faster time than a man