Adelaide Lambert

Early life

Lambert was born on October 27, 1907, in Ancon, Panama, in the Panama Canal Zone, to Mary Adelaide Howard and Clarence Kent Lambert, a government superintendent of motor transportation. Panama was then a U.S. protectorate, and where she first learned to swim. Most American articles that detail her swimming achievements note that by the age of 14 that Cristobal, on Panama's West Coast, not Ancon where she was born, was her home. One of her early coaches was A. Mitchell of the Atlantic Water Sports Club. Lambert was known at the time for a rapid six-beat kick per arm stroke, instead of a more common three-beat kick for each arm stroke, though she used it primarily in distances under 100 yards. One of her primary coaches at the Women's Swimming Association of New York, Louis Handley, advocated as many as a 10-beat kick for each full two strokes of his swimmer's arms. Handley accepted a lower beat count, but approved of increasing the count from 4 kicks per full arm cycle. Many former coaches had considered the American crawl to have originally been designed to have four kicks to one cycle of the arms. During her youth she became an all-around Canal Zone swimming champion.

Women's Swimming Association Around the age of 15, in a 220-yard handicap swum on August 8, 1923, representing the Women's Swimming Association of New York, Lambert finished first with a time of 2:51.2, in a meet sponsored by the International Printers' Tournament at Manhattan Beach. She held the 100-yard national freestyle championship that year. The Women's Swimming Association, founded by Charlotte Epstein in 1917, advocated women's swimming rights, and pushed for more comfortable suits for women that would be faster. They also advocated for the AAU to allow women as members and create more championship races for women, for women to be allowed to compete in distance races, rather than short sprints, for women to play water polo, and for women to compete in the Olympics. Many also advocated for Women's suffrage. On August 24, 1923, she set a record in the 300-meter distance of 4:29.6, bettering the former record by .2 seconds, and also set a record for the 300-yard distance. She finished ahead of the field by a full ten yards.

Stroke championships and records At the age of 19, on Feb. 2, 1927, in Buffalo, New York, Lambert set a world record during the Women's National AAU Indoor Swimming Championships, winning the 300-yard medley in 4:34.4, bettering the former 1926 mark of Carin Nilsson by two seconds. In January, 1927 in Miami, Florida, she broke American swimming records in the 500-meter backstroke with a time of 7:33.2, and also broke the American record in the 200-meter backstroke event with a time of 3:19.8. Her 200-meter time broke the old American record of Sybil Bauer by around 7 seconds. As part of the Women's Swimming Association, Lambert was coached by Louis de B. Handley.