Diana Nyad

Diana Nyad
Born	(1949-08-22) August 22, 1949 New York City, New York
Occupation(s)	Author, journalist, swimmer
Website	diananyad.com

Diana Nyad (born August 22, 1949 in New York City) is an American, author journalist and long-distance swimmer noted for her world record endurance championships.

Over two days in 1979, Nyad swam from Bimini to Florida, setting a distance record for non-stop swimming without a wetsuit that still stands today. She broke numerous world records, including the 45-year-old mark for circling Manhattan Island (7 hrs, 57 min) in 1975. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1986. Nyad was honored with her induction in the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 2003.

She currently provides a weekly five-minute radio piece on sports for KCRW called The Score (heard during KCRW's broadcast of NPR's "All Things Considered"), as well as for the Marketplace radio program. She formerly hosted the public radio program "The Savvy Traveler."

Nyad graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Lake Forest College in 1973.

Nyad told a reporter that today--in contrast to her youth--her drive is no longer propelled by attempts to work through the anger manifest from sexual abuse she suffered as a teenager.

On July 8, 2011, the U.S. gay sports website CompeteNetwork reported on her plans for the 2011 Cuba-to-Florida swim, writing that "(the) amazing Diana Nyad is a living legend in the swim world, and a role model for the GBLT community, being openly lesbian."

Swimming accomplishments

Born in New York City in August 1949 to stockbroker William Sneed and his wife Lucy Curtis. Her father died when she was three and her mother soon remarried Aristotle Nyad, a Greek land developer, who adopted Diana. The family then moved to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, where she grew up and began swimming seriously in grade seven. She was enrolled at the elite Pine Crest School in the mid-1960s, swimming under the tutelage of Olympian (and Hall of Fame) coach Jack Nelson. Before graduating she won three Florida state high school championships in the Backstroke (at 100 and 200 yards). She dreamed of swimming in the 1968 Summer Olympics, but in 1966 she spent three months in bed with endocarditis, an infection of the heart, and when she began swimming again she had lost her speed.

After graduating from Pine Crest School in 1967 she entered Emory University, but was thrown out of school for jumping out a fourth-floor dormitory window wearing a parachute. She then enrolled at Lake Forest College in Illinois, where she played tennis for the Foresters and resumed swimming, concentrating on distance events. She soon came to the attention of Buck Dawson, director of the International Swimming Hall of Fame in Florida, who introduced her to marathon swimming. She began training at his Camp Ak-O-Mak in Ontario, Canada and set a women's world record of 4 hours and 22 minutes in her first race, a 10-mile swim in Lake Ontario in July 1970 (finishing 10th overall). After graduating from Lake Forest College (with degrees in English and French), Nyad returned to south Florida to continue training with Dawson.

Diana Nyad was inducted into the United States' National Women’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1986, and in 2003 was honored with her induction into the International Swimming Hall of Fame. According to her "Speaker Bio" posted for the Gold Star Speakers Bureau in 2006, she is also a Hall of Famer at both her college, Lake Forest College in Illinois (where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa), and at her (private) high school, Pine Crest School in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida).

Diana is not only a world-class distance swimmer but is also an accomplished athlete who once ranked 30th amongst U.S. women squash players (date not given).

Distance swims

• 1970: At age 20, Nyad's marathon swimming career began in July 1970, when she set the women's world record for the 10-mile swim across Lake Ontario, in four hours and 22 minutes.

• 1974: In June 1974 flew to Italy and entered the 22-mile Bay of Naples race, setting another women's record of 8 hours, 11 minutes.

• 1975: At age 26, Nyad made national headlines by swimming 28 miles around the island of Manhattan (New York City) in just under 8 hours (7 hours 57 minutes.) An account of her swim, published the next day, stated Nyad was "5 feet six inches tall" and weighed 128 pounds.

• 1978: At age 28 she first attempted to swim from Havana, Cuba to Key West. Diving into the ocean at 2PM on Sunday 13 August from Ortegosa Beach (50 miles west of Havana), she swam inside a 20 X 40 foot steel shark cage for nearly 42 hours, before team doctors removed her during the 7 o'clock hour on the morning of Tuesday 15 August due to strong Westerly winds and 8-foot swells that were slamming her against the cage and pushing her off-course towards Texas. She had covered about 76 miles, but not in a straight line.

• 1979: In what was to be her last "competitive" swim on her 30th birthday (21-22 August 1979), she set a world record for distance swimming (both men and women) over open water by swimming 102 miles from North Bimini Island, Bahamas, to Juno Beach, Florida (without the use of protective shark cage). Thanks to favorable winds and a following sea she averaged 3.7 miles per hour and completed the swim in 27 and one-half hours.

Several experts who attended the 2011 Global Open Water Swimming Conference in New York City on 17-19 June 2011 expressed their strong belief that Nyad had both the physical ability and, more importantly, the positive mental stamina to be able to complete the Cuba-to-Florida swim: sports physiology studies have shown that in "extreme" marathon-type activities mental determination is a more important factor than the physical energy of youth. Research published by the Mayo Clinic in 2008 indicates there are beneficial effects of endurance training on age-related cellular dysfunction.

Cuba-to-Florida swim

By early January 2010 Nyad determined to begin working out for a summer attempt to swim from Cuba-to-Florida. Taking up residence in the Caribbean island of St. Maarten, from January through June she began doing 8-, 10-, 12- and 14-hour swims every other week. Then she moved her training to Key west and, while waiting for favorable weather conditions she embarked on a 24-hour swim. On 10 July she chartered a 35-foot fishing vessel to take her 40 miles out to sea. At 8:19 AM she jumped overboard and began swimming back towards Key West, with the boat following her. At 8:19 AM the next day her handlers helped her back onboard, still about 10 miles from land: she said she felt "tired and dehydrated" but still "strong" and "easily able to swim another 20 hours without any problem."

On July 10, 2010, at the age of 60, she began open water training for a 60-hour, 103-mile swim from Cuba to Florida, a task she had failed to finish thirty years previously. When asked her motivation, she replied, "Because I'd like to prove to the other 60-year-olds that it is never too late to start your dreams." She was scheduled to make the swim in August/September 2010, but bad weather forced her to cancel; she then planned to do the swim in July 2011. In a 15 October 2010 interview with CNN, Nyad said she was trained and ready to swim by July 23, but a record stretch of high winds and dropping water temperatures prevented her from making the attempt.

While training in St. Maarten, she sat for an interview that was published 25 March 2011 by the island's online news agency, The Daily Herald, remarking that "It's a large operation, like an expedition. We've got about 25 people, navigators, managers, boat crew, weather routers, medical people, shark experts, you name it. That's the time also when the water starts to get to its hottest. I need the hottest possible ocean. As soon as we hit the right forecast, we'll be off to Havana. We won't know the exact starting point probably until the night before. And we don't know exactly where landfall will be...I'd love to wind up in Key West, but it will depend on trajectory of the Gulf Stream."

Interviewed by the New York Times in Key West on 18 July, Nyad estimated that cost of her "expedition" was about $500,000.

The Swim Begins August 7, 2011

Diana Nyad announced Sunday morning August 7, 2011, at a Havana news conference, that she planned to enter the water at Havana's Marina Hemingway to begin her attempt. She entered the water later that evening at 7:45PM (Eastern) and began stroking for Florida. A news team from CNN was onboard her support ship and provided live coverage of her swim: CNN is the only major news organization that is covering the swim as it happens. Nyad stopped her attempt early in the morning on August 9 - at 12:45AM, exactly 29 hours in the water - after encountering strong currents and winds that pushed her miles off course (to the east). Nyad also said she had been suffering shoulder pain since her third hour in the water, but what made her abandon the effort was a flare-up of her asthma, such that, throughout the final hour, she could only swim a few strokes before repeatedly having to roll on her back to catch her breath.

Physical conditions

Nyad moved her training site from the Caribbean island of St. Maarten to Key West, Florida, in June 2011. She was joined by key members of her support team on June 28, to wait for ideal weather conditions that typically occur only during the summer doldrums in July and August. For the marathon swim to be feasible, two main weather conditions needed to come together at the same time: a combination of low-to-light winds (to minimize sea chop), and water temperatures in the high 80s. These relatively "high" water temperatures will produce a twin challenge: in the first half of her swim the warm water will dehydrate her body, while in the second half her body temperature will drop and she will face potential hypothermia. Nyad has bulked up her physique to about 150 pounds (15 pounds more than she weighed in 2010) to help counter the loss of body mass during her grueling swim.

To help fend off possible attacks by sharks, Nyad was escorted by a paddler in a kayak equipped with an electronic shark repellent, Protective Oceanic Device.

To keep Nyad swimming in a straight line, her specially designed, slow-moving catamaran support boat deployed a 3-meter (18-20 feet) streamer: a long pole keeps the streamer several yards away from the boat, and the streamer is designed to remain about 5 feet underwater, so that Nyad can swim above it, much like following a lane line in a swimming pool. At night, the white streamer will be replaced by a string of red LED lights. Writing in her blog in July 2011, Nyad stated that the development of the submerged guide streamer, in early summer 2011, may be the single greatest aid to her marathon swim. In all of her previous swims, she had trouble keeping the support boat in sight and was prone to veer off-course. Keeping a boat headed in a straight line, in the ocean, while moving at only 1 to 2 knots is very difficult, and her catamaran is equipped with thrusters and a special sea anchor (in case of following seas) to stabilize its course.

Support team

Nyad has assembled a team of 25 persons to support her during the swim. The people responsible for selecting the date to begin the swim are husband-and-wife scientists Dane and Jenifer Clark from Annapolis, Maryland. Dane is a meteorologist, Jenifer is a satellite oceanographer, and they are acknowledged as experts on Gulf Stream conditions. Her physician during training and accompanying her on the swim is Dr. Michael S. Broder. The Clarks will analyze satellite weather and ocean data to select the best three-day "window of opportunity" to find the right combination of favorable winds and the warmest water temperatures. Nyad wrote in her blog that Gulf water temperatures had been rising steadily through early July 2011, but that as of 11 July had tapered off at 84 degrees, and she required a minimum of 86 degrees, with even warmer water inside the Gulf Stream current, to begin her swim.

End of Swim

Nyad had to give up her swim on August 9th. After the aborted effort, Nyad was quoted as saying, "I may have ended this swim, but I'll never give up diving."

Professional writing and speaking career

Diana Nyad has written three books, Other Shores (Random House: September 1978) about her life and distance swimming, Basic Training for Women (Harmony Books: 1981), and in 1999 she wrote a biography of an NFL wide-receiver Boss of Me: The Keyshawn Johnson Story. She has also written for The New York Times, Newsweek magazine, and other publications. Diana and her best friend Bonnie Stoll (former #3 in the world on the Pro Racquetball Tour) have formed a company called BravaBody which is aimed at providing online exercise advice to women over 40, with the two world-class athletes giving direct inspiration and custom-made work-outs. As of 2006, she also delivered motivational talks to groups through the Gold Star speakers agency, for a fee of between $10,000 to $15,000. As of 2006, she was a (long-time) weekly contributor to National Public Radio's afternoon news show All Things Considered (appearing on Thursdays), as well as the "business of sport" commentator for American Public Media's public radio program Marketplace business news. She was also a regular contributor to the CBS News television show Sunday Morning.

In her 1978 autobiography Nyad described marathon swimming as a battle for survival against a brutal foe - the sea - and the only victory possible is to "touch the other shore."

• An analysis of Nyad's ability to disassociate her mind during her marathon swims can be found in the 2008 book Sporting Lives: Metaphor and Myth in American Sports Autobiographies by Jame W. Pipkin (Univ. of Missouri Press: 2008); Diana Nyad pp. 90-92.

External links

• Diana Nyad Xtreme Dream blog
• Official bio on American Public Media
• Sports Illustrated, 28 August 1978; "An Ill Wind That Blew No Good"
• Sports Complex: Talk of The Times; 1999 event at San Francisco Public Library, Nyad speaks about her childhood
• Diana Nyad Begins New Attempt At Florida Swim From Hemingway Marina