Though Diana Nyad didn’t follow traditional marathon swimming rules on her Cuba-to-Florida attempts, she has always insisted that she never touched the boat, pushed off the boat, or received help moving forward or staying afloat.
Recently unearthed footage from 2011 shows her going three for four.
Three days after Diana Nyad’s “successful” 2013 Cuba-to-Florida attempt, lead kayaker Don McCumber (as @Woodkayaker) wrote on the Marathon Swimmers Forum that he had video of “water breaks, feeding breaks, medical breaks, the application of anti-jellyfish creams, and the donning of the ZERO FLOTATION suit and mask” (archived).
Little of that footage materialized. These creenshots from McCumber’s 2011 video suggest why he might have withheld it:
Screenshots of footage from Diana Nyad’s September 2011 Cuba-Florida attempt. The images show Nyad touching her guide boat and being held up by a crew member, an episode that lasts at least 60 seconds. (Clips here [184MB]. The first clip shows Nyad possibly kicking off the boat.)Continue reading →
