Diana Nyad

Diana Nyad, born August 22, 1949 in New York City is a former world record-holding American swimmer and public radio contributor.

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 8 July 2011, the U.S. gay sports website CompleteNetwork.com reported on her plans for the 2011 Cuba 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 to 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 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 woman'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 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 she was honored with her induction in 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).

Previous 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.

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 charted 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 now plans 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.

Nyad’s second attempt (in 2011) to complete this swim has gained the attention of thousands of supporters, including the official sponsorship by Secret Deodorant, which has created an entire social platform on Facebook for fans to share encouraging messages and support. 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, and explained: "We're aiming to be ready for July 1; that means all the preparation done, and all the crew waiting in Key West," Diana states. "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. 

Physical challenges

At age 61, Nyad has been described by her coach as a "swimming machine", able to swim hour after hour while maintaining a metronomic stroke rate of 54 strokes per minute, which results in a speed of 1.5 miles per hour. This is down, slightly, from her pace of about 60 strokes per minute when she in her 20s. At her current SOA (speed of advance), the 103 miles from Cuba to Florida will take a minimum of 60 hours. And any significant "push" to the east by the Gulf Stream current could add miles, and hours, to the swim. In July 2010, while in Florida waiting for ideal weather conditions for the Cuba swim, she completed a 24-hour marathon swim and her trainer noted that her stroke rate was practically unchanged from beginning to end.

Nyad moved her training site from the Caribbean island of St. Maarten to Key West, Florida, in June 2011, and she was joined by key members of her support team on 28 June, 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 must 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.

While swimming, Nyad's expenditure of energy will require her to maintain a steady intake of food and liquids. Nutritionists estimate she will need to take in about one liter of water (actually, energy drinks) per hour, as well as 1,000 calories of food per hour (mostly in the form of easily digestible energy gels and food pastes.) In various news interviews Nyad has said she plans to swim for 90-minute intervals before stopping to eat and drink. Marathon swimmers, particularly those in warm salt-water, have experienced problems trying to swallow sufficient amounts of liquids and food after their lips and tongue begin to swell from hours of immersion in salt-water. Under the rules established for competitive long-distance swims, Nyad may not hold on to any object (such as the side of the boat) nor have the aid of a flotation device while resting and eating: she can only tread water. However, it is permitted for trainers to lower drinking (and feeding) tubes to her mouth, and to apply protective cream as needed.

To help fend-off possible attacks by sharks, Nyad will be "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 will deploy 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. 

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 and Jenifer is a satellite oceanographer and they are acknowledged as experts on Gulf Stream conditions. The Clarks will analyze satellite weather and ocean data to select the best 3-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.

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 NPR's 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.