Diana Nyad Fact Check: Home

National Title/World Record (1966)

“When I was 16 years old I won the United States Nationals. . . . Later that summer, I broke the world record for the 100-meter back stroke.”*

Nyad never finished better than 16th in a national meet, and she never came close to setting a world record.

*Text: From “The Courage To Succeed.”
Image: Via JETLINX.

Olympic Trials (1968)

“I remember it like it was yesterday. . . .
I looked up at the electronic scoreboard and I was sixth.”*

The 1968 women’s trials didn’t have an electronic scoreboard. Nyad didn’t know that, though, because she wasn’t there.

*Text: Ibid.
Image: Screenshot from “1968 Olympics: Women's Swimming Trials.”

First Pro Race (1970)

“It was a long day—37 hours and 38 minutes across Lake Ontario.”*

In her first professional race, Nyad swam 20 times around a rectangular, half-mile course set just off the beach. She set a new women’s record of 4 hours and 23 minutes.

“The lake was 48 degrees. . . .
I finished third among the 444 that day.”**

Nyad finished 10th out of 30 starters. Water temperature: between 64 and 66 degrees. If 444 swimmers had spent 30+ hours in 48-degree water, 444 swimmers would have died.

*Beachbody 2014, (23:27).

*K8 East (18:32, 21:14).

Manhattan (1975)

“I was the first woman to swim around Manhattan Island.”*

Nyad was the seventh woman to complete the swim. Long before she jumped into the Hudson River, she knew she wouldn’t be the first.

*Text: Find a Way, p. 66.
Image: Nancy Moran.

The English Channel (1976)

“The only sort of world-class swim I had tried and failed at back in my twenties was going from Cuba to Florida.”*

When she was 27, Nyad attempted a two-way crossing of the English Channel. She tried three times and failed to get across once.

*TEDMED, 2011 (2:27).
Image: Screenshot from Courage To Succeed, a documentary about the first two of Nyad’s three English Channel failures (clip).

Best of the Seventies

“I became, in the 1970s, the best ocean swimmer in the world. I held all the major records on planet Earth, out in the open sea.”*

Diana Nyad hasn’t completed a single one of the major ocean swims on the planet, much less held records in them. She has never come close to being the best ocean swimmer of any decade.

*Wilshire Ebell presentation, 7 Oct 2019 (audio clip).

Images: Canada's Cindy Nicholas (Toronto City News file photo) and Australia’s Des Renford (via The Daily Telegraph, Sydney, Australia). In 1977, Nicholas became the first woman to complete a two-way crossing of the English Channel. She broke the overall record by almost ten hours. Renford completed 16 English Channel crossings between 1970 and 1979.

Dishonoring Women

“As a sports journalist and a feminist all my life, I take both joy and pride in honoring all great women athletes of all eras. . . .”*

Nyad frequently denigrates and dishonors other women athletes. If she’s not ignoring or demeaning them, she’s stealing their accomplishments and calling them her own.

*Text: “History Rewritten....to my GREAT Surprise!” 10 Jun 2011.
Image: One of Nyad’s favorite targets, Dutch great Judith de Nijs. Via mastersprint.nl.

Walter Poenisch

“He’s not a legal marathon swimmer. . . .
He does not swim by the rules.
He’s a gimmick. . . .
In the world of sports, he’s a cheat.”*

In 1978, Walter Poenisch became the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida. Unlike Nyad, he established a set of rules before the swim and followed them throughout. Nyad’s slander ended Poenisch’s swimming career and destroyed his life.

*New York Times, 14 Jul 1978.
Image: From Lori Gum’s “Lost At Sea.”

The Cuba Crossing (2013)

“I swam—we made it, our team—from the rocks of Cuba to the beach of Florida in squeaky clean, ethical fashion. . . .”*

Despite Nyad’s protestations to the contrary, she could not provide evidence that proved she swam from shore to shore under her own power. The available data indicates she did not.

*Conference call, 10 Sep 2013, (clip; also via CNN)
Image: One of many episodes of touching and holding that would have disqualified any marathon swimmer attempting to complete a legitimate crossing. Photographer: Dawn Blomgren. Via The Diana Nyad Cuba-Florida Swim 2013 Report.

The following untruth shows that Diana Nyad will lie about anything.

Warning: Contains explicit language and other content some might find disturbing.

The Holocaust Survivor

“[S]he was made . . . into the SS officer’s little concubine. For the next two-and-a-half years . . . she, every day, had oral sex, anal sex, intercourse, you name it, with these grown men. She was three!”*

According to the former director of the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site, Nyad’s tale of a three-year-old sex slave at Dachau “is completely fictional.”

*Big Questions podcast, 21 Aug 2018 (story begins at 20:03)
Image: Wolfgang Manousek’s photo of the memorial sculpture at Dachau concentration camp.

Further Reading

Unreliable Natator

Omissions, Exaggerations, and Lies in Find a Way

Get ready for Nyad, an upcoming biopic based on Diana’s fabrication-filled memoir, Find a Way. Unreliable Natator is available on the web, as a pdf, or as an abridged pdf.

Image: Dawn Blomgren (detail). Via HuffPost.

51 Fabrications

An Overview of Nyad’s Untruths

A list of lies—one for each year since her first national exposure, and an extra one for good luck—on a single page.

Image: by Nancy Moran (detail).

Proof