Diana Nyad

At 74 years old, Diana Nyad has this physical status:

Diana Nyad (née Sneed) was born in August 22, 1949, is an American writer, a motivational speaker, and a long-distance swimmer.

Nyad soared to national prominence in 1975 when she swam around Manhattan (28 miles or 45 kilometers), and in 1979, she swam from North Bimini, The Bahamas, to Juno Beach, Florida (102 kilometers).

On her fifth attempt and at the age of 64, she became the first woman confirmed to swim from Cuba to Florida without the use of a shark cage. (110 mi. or 180 km)

Nyad was also ranked thirteenth among US women squash players.

Early life and education

Nyad was born in New York City on August 22, 1949, to stockbroker William L. Sneed Jr. and his partner Lucy Winslow Curtis (1925–2007). Charlotte N. Winslow, the maker of Mrs Winslow's Soothing Syrup, a common morphine-based medicine for children teething that was produced from 1849 to the 1930s, was her mother. Laura Curtis Bullard, a great-grandniece, is also a feminist activist.

The Sneeds divorced in 1952, after Lucy Sneed married Aristotle Z. Nyad, a Greek-Egyptian land developer who adopted Diana. The family migrated to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where she started swimming in seventh grade.

She began swimming under the tutelage of Olympian and Hall of Fame coach Jack Nelson, who has said, molested her from the start when she was fourteen years old and continuing after she graduated from high school as he did with other girls he taught. She won three Florida state high school championships in the Backstroke at 100 and 200 meters (91 and 183 meters). She had aspired to participate in the 1968 Summer Olympics, but she was forced to bed with endocarditis, a heart disease, and when she started swimming again, she lost time.

After graduating from Pine Crest School in 1967, she enrolled in Emory University but was eventually suspended for bursting out a parachute window from a fourth-floor dormitory window. She then attended Lake Forest College in Illinois, where she competed for the Foresters and resumed swimming, focusing on distance events. She soon became interested in Buck Dawson, the director of the International Swimming Hall of Fame in Florida, who introduced her to marathon swimming. In her first race, a 10-mile (16 km) swim in Lake Ontario in July 1970, she began training at his Camp Ak-O-Mak in Magnetawan, Ontario, Canada, breaking a women's world record of 4 hours and 22 minutes. Nyad returned to south Florida to continue training with Dawson after graduating from Lake Forest College in 1973 with a degree in English and French.

Personal life

Nyad has cited several factors in her decision to swim, including her rage over and her attempt to avoid sexual abuse as a child. Nyad has discussed the subject in a public forum. In an article in The New York Times, she freely spoke about this painful part of her life and her struggle to cope with the agony. Nyad is openly lesbian and is an atheist.

Nyad took part in "Swim for Change" by swimming in a specially constructed, 120-foot long, two-lane pool in New York City's Herald Square from October 8 to ten. AmeriCares raised $105,001.00 to help the victims of Hurricane Sandy.

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Career

Nyad has written four books, including Other Shores (Random House, 1979), Boss of Me: A Way to a Life (Knopf Publishing Group, 2015). She has also contributed to The New York Times, NPR's "All Things Considered," Newsweek magazine, and other journals. Diana and her all-girlfriend Bonnie Stoll (former No. 6) (No. 7) The three world champions on the Pro Racquetball Tour (also known as BravaBody), a company dedicated to providing online exercise advice to women over 40 years old, has formed BravaBody, with the two world-class stars providing direct inspiration and custom-made work-outs. She gave motivational talks to groups through the Gold Star speakers company in 2006, costing from $10,000 to $15,000.

"The Savvy Traveler," Nyad's public radio show "The Savvy Traveler" was on the radio for a long time. In addition,, she was the subject of a short documentary "Diana" by the Australian television network WIGS in 2012. She served as a (long-time) weekly contributor to National Public Radio's afternoon news show All Things Considered (appearing on Thursday), as well as a "business of sport" commentator for American Public Radio's public radio service Marketplace company news. She was also a regular contributor to the CBS News television show "Sunday Morning." Nyad's 1978 autobiography described marathon swimming as a war against a brutal enemy—the sea—and the only hope is to "touch the other shore."

James W. Pipkin covers Nyad's ability to dissociate during her marathon swims.

In early 2013, an independently produced documentary film The Other Shore was released in early 2013, months before Nyad's first successful swim from Cuba to Florida.

Nyad went from Bimini to Florida in 1979, setting a new record for non-stop swimming without a wetsuit, which is still stands today. In 1975, she set new world records, including the 45-year-old record for circling Manhattan Island (7 hrs, 57 min) in 1975.

Several experts who attended the 2011 Global Open Water Swimming Conference in New York City expressed their adamant belief that Nyad had both the physical ability and, more importantly, the stamina to complete the Cuba-to-Florida swim: sports physiology reports have found that mental endurance was a more important factor than physical endurance.

Nyad began training for a summer voyage from Cuba to Florida early January 2010. Every other week, she will swim in St. Maarten, Dominica, from January to June. She continued her training in Key West and embarked on a 24-hour swim while waiting for good weather. She ordered a 35-foot fishing boat to carry her 40 miles (64 km) out to sea on July 10. She jumped overboard and started swimming back towards Key West at 8:19 a.m., with the boat following her. She was "tired and dehydrated" but "easily able to swim another 20 hours without fail" at 8:19 a.m. the next day.

At the age of 60, she began open water training in preparations for a 60-hour, 103-kilometer (166 km) swim from Cuba to Florida, a challenge she had not attempted to achieve thirty years ago. When asked about her motivation, she replied, "Because I'd like to tell the other 60-year-olds that it is never too late to start your hopes." She had intended to participate in the swim in August/September 2010, but bad weather forced her to cancel; she rescheduled for July 2011. Nyad said she was prepared and ready to swim by July 23, but she was prevented from participating in a record stretch of high winds and decreasing water temperatures in a CNN interview on October 15, 2010.

She sat for an interview that was published in the island's online news service, The Daily Herald, on March 25, 2011, remarking that "it's a massive operation, like an expedition." Around 25 people, navigators, engineers, boat crew, weather routers, medical, and shark experts are among the many things we have on hand. And, at this time, the ocean is at its hottest. I need the hottest ocean I can imagine. We'll be off to Havana as soon as we get the right forecast. We won't know the exact starting point until the night before. And we don't know where landfall will be located in Key West, but the Gulf Stream's course will determine it. Nyad estimated that the expense of her "expedition" was around $500,000.

In June 2011, Nyad moved her training site from St. Maarten, the Caribbean island, to Key West, Florida. On June 28, she was joined by senior members of her support staff to wait for ideal weather that typically occur only during the summer doldrums in July and August. For the marathon swim, two main weather conditions must exist at the same time: a combination of low-to-light winds (to minimize sea chop), and high 80s °F (high 20s/low 30s °C). Both extreme water temperatures in the first half of her swim will dehydrate her body, while in the second half, her body temperature will decrease and she may face potential hypothermia. Nyad's body had boosted to about 150 pounds/70 kg (15 pounds/7 kg more than she weighed in 2010) to help combat the loss of body mass during her grueling swimming.

A paddler in a kayak carrying an electronic shark repellent named as a Shark Shield led Nyad to its rescue.

Nyad's custom built, slow-moving catamaran support boat carried a 10-foot (3.0 m) streamer so that the streamer can swim above it, much like following a lane line in a swimming pond. The white streamer was illuminated at night by a string of red LED lights. Nyad wrote on her blog in July 2011 that the introduction of the submerged guide streamer in early summer 2011 might be the single greatest help to her marathon swim. She had a difficult time keeping the support boat in sight and was prone to veer off track in all of her previous swims. While traveling at only 1 to 2 knots in the ocean, keeping a boat moving in a straight line is extremely difficult, and her catamaran is equipped with thrusters and a unique sea anchor (in the case of following seas) to help it maintain its course.

Nyad returned to the sea in Havana, Italy, on August 7, 2011, a CNN news crew on board her support ship, providing live coverage of her dive, which involved electronic "Shark Shields" but no shark cage. Nyad's attempt was put off early in the morning at 12:45 AM on August 9 after 29 hours in the water, after being hit by strong currents and winds that had pushed her miles off track to the east. Nyad continued suffering shoulder pain since her third hour in the sea, but what made her drop the effort was a bout of her asthma, so she could only swim a few strokes before having to crawl on her back to catch her breath repeatedly.

Diana Nyad's third attempt at the Cuba-to-Florida race started on September 23, 2011, but she had to stop after about 41 hours, about 124 kilometers (124 km), after currents pushed her off track. Nyad's TED talk in October 2011 outlined how box jellyfish stings on her forearm and neck caused respiratory discomfort that eventually caused the swimmer to stop.

Nyad's fourth attempt was unsuccessful due to a closed shark cage on August 18, 2012. Nyad and her team stopped the swim at 12:55 a.m. on August 21, 2012, reportedly due to two hurricanes and nine jellyfish stings, after having covered more distance than her three previous attempts.

Nyad started her fifth attempt to swim from Havana, Cuba, to Florida, with a 35-person support team, swimming without a shark cage but shielded from jellyfish by a silicone mask, gloves, and boots. Nyad reached the beach in Key West about 1:55 p.m. EDT on September 2, 2013, only 53 hours after she started her journey.

While not explicitly questioning the authenticity of her tale, several skeptics, including long-distance swimmers, demanded the swim's GPS history, surface current, weather, and Nyad's eating and drinking records, as well as Nyad's eating and drinking habits. The New York Times analyzed and graphed the swim's published GPS data on September 8. Nyad's apparent phenomenal total velocity during certain sections of the swim was largely revealed following Nyad's reply to questions and comments from her navigator and two observers, Tamay Ozgokmen, a University of Miami oceanography professor, and her observations that Nyad's favorable Gulf Stream currents. On September 19, the New York Times public editor announced that the obsession had shifted from serious concerns about potentially resting aboard a boat to more scientific concerns about whether her crews' handling her while assisting with her protective suit properly rendered the swim a "assisted" swim. Nyad had explained that wearing the jellyfish-protection suit was a life-and-death measure for her, as the new "traditions" of the sport had superseded. Nyad said she would "wait and see" if the swim would be officially confirmed on September 12, 2013. The dive has not been ratified by any marathon swimming body as of 2022.

Nyad appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on September 10, 2013. She began training in the Caribbean in January 2013 with 12-hour nonstop swimming and then progressed to 14, 18, 20, and 24 hours. Nyad also stated that although she swims, she recalls Stephen Hawking books, sings, counts, and has vivid hallucinations of The Wizard of Oz and the yellow brick road.

Nyad appeared on March 4, 2014, as one of the celebrities to compete on Dancing with the Stars' 18th season, in which she placed in last place. She was partnered with professional dancer Henry Byalikov.

Nyad was a guest correspondent on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries about Alcatraz in 1989. She appeared on a segment that featured real-life stories as well as recent reenactments of kayakers and a swimmer trying to reach San Francisco Bay.

Nyad appeared in the Macy Gray music video for the song "Bang, Bang" in 2014.

Nyad appeared in ONWARD – The Diana Nyad story, which she had also written) in Los Angeles in 2014, directed by Josh Ravetch.

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