Gertrude Ederle sponsored by a newspaper, the "Baltimore Post", which tried to create a rivalry between her and Ederle in the weeks spent training off the French coast. In addition to Cannon, several other swimmers, including two other American women – Clarabelle Barrett and Amelia Gade Corson – were training in England with the goal of becoming the first woman to swim the Channel. Barrett and Cannon were unsuccessful but three weeks after Ederle's feat, Corson crossed in a time that was 50 minutes slower than Ederle. For her second attempt at the Channel, Ederle had an entourage aboard the tug (the
Enrique Tirabocchi successfully appealed to Benito Mussolini to retrieve the award. Tirabocchi credited American Gertrude Ederle with having made "a marvelous swim" in 1926, when she finished in 14 hours and 39 minutes, cutting almost two full hours off his record time, saying that her pace was not a matter of luck but was part of the "excellent constitution... [and] great powers of resistance" needed to complete the swim. Enrique Tirabocchi Enrique Tirabocchi (variously spelled as Enrico Tiraboschi) was an Argentinian marathon swimmer who in August 1926 became the fourth person to successfully swim across the English Channel. He was the first