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 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” (via Laura Sanders’ archived layout site).

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