Author: nyadfactcheck

Attachment Disorder, part 1

Diana Nyad didn’t swim from Cuba to Florida under her own power. In the next three posts, I’ll describe — and provide evidence for — my theory of how she made it look like she did.

part 1 – part 2 – part 3

In Medias Res

Starting with the rules laid down in my house when I was a child, I have never much respected society’s expected standards. . . . When some television executive tells me the story I’m working on has to have a linear structure and start at the beginning, I revolt and take my case to the highest command, arguing that to embark on this particular story in the middle and work the early part in later hits the sublime emotion of it. Ask Shakespeare about in medias res.
—Diana Nyad, Find a Way, p. 222

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Diana Nyad is well into the second night of her fifth and final attempt to swim from Cuba to Florida. She has made miraculous progress over the last two days, often moving at speeds more than double and sometimes triple her usual 1.5-2 miles per hour. At 9 p.m. on Sunday night, she’s chugging along at about three miles per hour — with the ostensible help of a strong current flowing northeast.
Continue reading “Attachment Disorder, part 1”

Countering the Currents

I have a theory about how Diana may have caught a ride during her Cuba-Florida crossing. Over the next month or so, I’ll make a case in support of that theory. Before that happens, though, we need to catch up on some currents.

From “SW Fla. group helps swimmer reach goal,” by Mike Braun, The News-Press, 5 Sep 2013.

Mike Braun’s article “SW Fla. group helps swimmer reach goal” appeared in the News-Press of South Lee/North Naples on September 5, 2013, during the interlude between the end of Nyad’s crossing on the 2nd and the infamous conference call on the 10th. You can also find the article on USA Today’s site under a different title: “Florida kayakers help swimmer Nyad reach historic goal.”

Nyad’s crew had gotten their stories and their currents straight by the 10th.

But not so by the 5th.
Continue reading “Countering the Currents”

Diana Nyad, Surely a Lesson to Us All

Diana surprised me again. No new facts, but the brazenness with which she presents a favorite fable will take your breath away.

This weekend, the DN Annex organized a scavenger hunt. We fanned out across the internet in search of images that would support or refute my theory of how Diana Nyad may have cheated.

More on that theory in a later post. For now, I want to say—with all due humility—that I won big time!

And not only did I win; in the process of achieving victory, I came across some gems unrelated to the boom quest.
Continue reading “Diana Nyad, Surely a Lesson to Us All”

Disqualified!

By the rules that Diana Nyad and her own team set forth, we can declare her 2013 Cuba-Florida crossing invalid.

The missing manual. Jellyfish courtesy of Lynn Kubasek.

“I honored the rules,” Nyad told David Adams of Reuters a week after she completed her Cuba-Florida crossing (“Questions Linger….”).

But what rules did she honor?

“Trust me,” she said in a Facebook post, “this dream [is] too important to me to have any slight thing outside the fair, just, ethical and agreed-upon rules of our sport” (screenshot here and below).

We still have no idea what Nyad was talking about.
Continue reading “Disqualified!”

The Journey: Diana Nyad, Mary Oliver, and Me

That’s Ruby on the left. Mary Oliver loved dogs, and this post needed a photo. I don’t know how Oliver felt about barbecue sauce.

The poet Mary Oliver died on Thursday. I almost hate to admit how much I like her work — not because she isn’t all morose and difficult like poets are supposed to be, but because some people (well, one in particular) misappropriate and befoul her words.
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Diana’s GREAT Surprise, part 2: The Relinquisher

Nyad says that she “relinquished my position as screenwriter of my life story.” Of her Manhattan swim, she once said, “I hereby relinquish my title as the first woman.” But you can’t relinquish something you never had.

I was so diverted by Nyad’s cinematic machinations in the last post that I missed something important. When Diana finally tells us that she’s not writing the screenplay for Nyad: The Motion Picture, she declares:

I relinquished my position as screenwriter of my life story. (Sung, “Diana Nyad…” )

When she got caught in her Manhattan lie back in 2011, she used the same verb:

I hereby relinquish my title as the first woman. (Nyad via the Wayback Machine)

Continue reading “Diana’s GREAT Surprise, part 2: The Relinquisher”

Nyad: The Motion Picture

For over forty years, Diana Nyad has longed for a biopic devoted to her favorite subject, Diana Nyad.*

* I borrowed “favorite subject” from Jonathan Yardley’s 1978 Sports Illustrated review of Nyad’s first memoir, Other Shores. However, Yardley says Nyad has two favorite subjects. He was wrong.
turtle

Below is a lightly and snarkily annotated chronological list of all of Nyad’s biopic-related pronouncements that I know of.
Continue reading “Nyad: The Motion Picture”

Diana’s Disappearing Ink

The first pattern that emerged from the “110 Miles . . .” discussion on the Marathon Swimmers Forum was Diana Nyad’s policy of active un-engagement.

Don’t Rock the Boat

Diana and/or her handlers must have calculated that their boat already rode so low in the water that any movement might swamp it. So Diana either does not engage with skeptics; or, when she momentarily forgets herself and does engage, she quickly erases the evidence, pretends nothing happened, and hopes that the boat stops rocking.

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New York Herald Tribune Archive Holds Nyad-related Gems

Giving Aris Nyad the benefit of the doubt leads to Herald Tribune treasures.

“Diana Nyad’s Unspeakable Lie, part 2” included a link to a 1942 Montreal Gazette article, “Young Greek Flier Held in New York Jail.” That flier, Aristotle Nyad, was “a handsome, aristocratic-looking young fellow” who, according to the article,

…had with him a clipping from the New York Tribune giving an interview as one of the many young Greeks who had stormed their consulate in New York when Greece was invaded, hoping they could get back so they could fight for their country.

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¡Adelante!

A rereading of “110 miles, 53 hours: Questions for Diana Nyad” sends the Annex swimming off in a new direction.

¡Feliz año nuevo!

“G Is For Gato,” by Dora Hathazi Mendes. Via Karavella Atelier.

I love the sound of Spanish, the music of it, the way so many words end by flowing out of vowels rather than by crashing into consonants: gato vs. cat, for instance, or perro vs. dog, calle vs. street, etc.

I don’t know enough Spanish, though, to converse in it beyond the level of un niño who has just turned three.

I do know a thing or two about Diana Nyad.  She is a con artist and a fraud, and she will lie about anything. The last two Annex posts leave no doubt about that.

So just one task remains: proving that Nyad did not swim all the way from Cuba to Florida under her own power.
Continue reading “¡Adelante!”