Month: January 2024

Diana Nyad Could Not Have Completed A Legitimate Crossing From Cuba To Florida, And Here’s Why

The World Open Water Swimming Association’s 2022 report on Nyad’s crossing provided an extraordinary amount of new data that goes a long way toward proving, once and for all, that she did not complete the “swim” under her own power.

On a sweltering summer day in 1995, renowned close-up magician Ricky Jay sat opposite British journalist Suzie Makenzie in a Los Angeles restaurant. While they waited to order, Jay began telling a story about one of his mentors, Max Malini, in which Malini lifted his hat off a table to reveal a large chunk of ice.

Jay had been holding his menu upright in front of him. As he finished the story, he raised the menu off the table to reveal — yes, you guessed it — an enormous block of ice. The ice hadn’t melted at all, so it couldn’t have been there for more than a few seconds. Mackenzie tried to lift it off the table to check if it was real. When she realized it was, she burst into tears.

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The Nyad Apologists Who Say She Hasn’t Lied For Years Need To Explain What Happened Last Month

Kelly Bush Novak, founder of ID, the public relations firm representing Diana, once said that lying was the worst PR move she’d ever seen: “I’ve seen people do it. I’ve seen publicists do it on people’s behalf. It always catches up to you. You can’t get away with lying.”

Unless you’re Diana Nyad.

Ancient History

Nyad and her PR surrogates want us to think she hasn’t lied for decades:

“It makes me really sad that we are scrutinizing things that happened 30 years ago.”
— Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, NYAD co-director, Los Angeles Times, 30 Aug 2023

“‘She said some untrue things 40 years ago.'”
— Evan Morrison, Marathon Swimmers Federation co-founder, via Facebook (archived)

“Some of those statements are 45 years old — there wasn’t even an internet then. . . . To me, it’s ancient history.”
— Diana Nyad, Los Angeles Times, 30 Aug 2023

Make that 48; here’s what Diana said almost half a century ago:

“It’s true I used to lie. . . . Only to impress myself. I would tell a cab driver a lie — anybody. I don’t have to do that anymore.”
— Diana Nyad, Village Voice, 1976

But she does. Below are some of the lies she told last month.

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