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.
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.
Diana has everything she wants — a Cuba-Florida “success,” a movie about herself, and thousands of adoring, credulous fans. So why can’t she stop lying?
On December 5th, “the most influential and resilient women in entertainment, media and technology gathered to inspire and empower each other” at the TheWrap’s Power Women Summit.
Diana Nyad gave the keynote address. In her first solo presentation since the release of her biopic, she proved again that she is one of the most successful con artists in sports history.
Diana Nyad says her lies are “ancient history.” A recent TIME piece proves otherwise.
In an August Los Angeles Times article, Diana Nyad says her fabrications are “ancient history.” However, a recent TIME item demonstrates once again that you shouldn’t believe a serial liar when she says she’s stopped lying.
From “What Makes Diana Nyad Swim? An Absolutely Killing Ambition,” The Village Voice, Jane Shapiro, 2 Feb 1976.
First, though, Park shows she misunderstands the fundamental controversy regarding Nyad’s crossing:
Marathon swimmers remain divided over whether the swim was “unassisted” or “assisted.”
Only a few marathon swimmers — if any — cling to the “unassisted” myth. We do remain divided over whether or not she completed the crossing under her own power.
[NYAD:] I understand why someone might be rankled if they don’t get any recognition for all of that training and achievement.
What rankles marathon swimmers — most of whom don’t thirst for wide recognition — is that the most recognized person in the sport is a serial liar who cares little about marathon swimming beyond using it for self-aggrandizement. Continue reading →
Criticisms over Nyad’s history of making inflated claims about her career have cast a shadow over the inspirational film.
It’s not just her “inflated claims about her career” but her exaggerations, hyperbole, and outright lies about practically everything.
“Nyad” co-directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin . . . say they did extensive research on Nyad before jumping into the film.
I would love to know what their “extensive research” entailed. Did they look into other fictitious swims Nyad claims to have completed? Did they look at her despicable treatment of other athletes?
Or did they talk only to Steven Munatones, an uncredited advisor on the film, who would believe Nyad walked from Cuba to Florida if she told him she did?
“She is unabashedly a complicated, gray character in real life and we went to great lengths, as did Annette, to portray that in its full glory,” Vasarhelyi told The Times.
On her new website, Diana and her handlers try to sweep 50 years of lies and self-obsession under the rug. They needed a bigger rug and a shorter page.
[Update, 28 Nov 2023: Sometime within the last 10 days, diananyad.com grew into a multi-page site. I’ve linked below to archived versions when necessary.]
THE CUBA SWIM TEN YEARS LATER:
A Reflection, by Diana Nyad.
Diana’s handlers must have wanted to keep the update brief to limit opportunities for “misstatements.” However, even a single page offers Nyad plenty of room to lie.
Evidence in Nyad’s “Reflection” suggests her handlers knew this, so they continued trying to rein her in:
According to an article Vanity Fair posted yesterday, the upcoming Nyad biopic “doesn’t paint [her] as a liar.” If that’s true, then Diana’s latest Holocaust exploitation tale proves the filmmakers didn’t have a clue.
During the COVID lockdown, Diana Nyad took members of her walking group, EverWalk, on two virtual journeys: one from Cuba to Florida (Diana walked on water!) and another along le chemin de la liberté, “The Freedom Trail.”
Those who signed up monitored their progress using a step-tracking app, WalkerTracker, so they could follow “the actual story of Diana Nyad’s mother Lucy” and her “escape from the Nazis over the famous Chemin de la Liberté in the Pyrenees.”
As often happens with Nyad’s tales, this one inflated over time until the last version bore little resemblance to the original.
In 2013, Diana shared on Facebook that her “mom came to the States from Paris during WWII.” She left it at that.
In a 2014 New Yorker profile, Diana says that Lucy was 17 when the war reached Paris. She joined “a group of people” who bicycled and walked through southern France, then crossed the Pyrenees on foot.
In Find a Way (2015), Diana says her mother was 15 when the German army reached Paris. Her uncle and aunt, concerned about her safety, send her back to the U.S.
Diana Nyad’s written description of her Florida Straits virtual walk contains some of her usual lies as well as an omission that’s heartless, thoughtless, or some combination of both.
The best men and women swimmers had made their valiant attempts. (notes, part 1)
(Only six swimmers have attempted the crossing.) And her mother-of-all box jellyfish lies:
Most people who have ever been touched by the Box have died instantaneously. (notes, part 1)
(Most people survive box jelly stings.)
Nyad’s Breathtaking Lie of Omission
In part two of her notes, Nyad acknowledges one of her two successful predecessors, an “Australian woman named Susie Mulroney” (it’s “Maroney”), but she doesn’t mention the other, Walter Poenisch, the man whose life she destroyed.
However, she includes a photo from his crossing (see above). I’m not sure if she meant her EverWalkers to think it’s Maroney, or if it’s Nyad’s way of acknowledging-without-acknowledging the man about whom she said,
He does not swim by the rules. He’s a gimmick. He’s a cheat. In the world of sports, he’s a cheat. (New York Times, 14 Jul 1978)
and
With all due respect to the aged, a man who’s 64 years old and very overweight is not going to swim for two days nonstop. (Miami Herald, 26 June 1978)
How about a woman who was 64 years old and had lied nonstop for 40 years?
Last night, a journalist researching Diana Nyad asked me if Nyad ever claimed to have completed an English Channel crossing. I couldn’t remember her saying so, but I recalled her walking right up to the edge.
In a 1977 Minneapolis Star article, Nyad begins a discourse on hallucinations with, “Last summer, when I was swimming the English Channel.” She doesn’t mention that she made three unsuccessful attempts “last summer” and didn’t plan on returning.
Earlier in the article, the author, Rob Tanenbaum, writes about “the perilous English Channel, which [Nyad] has done twice.”
Both statements leave escape hatches. Nyad doesn’t say she finished. Though Tanenbaum does — assuming “done” means she swam “shore to shore” in “squeaky clean, ethical fashion” — Nyad could claim he misquoted her.
The article contains plenty of other lies, including
she was still working on her PhD at NYU.
she was an Olympic-caliber swimmer.
she was “rated the top marathon swimmer in the world.”
But what demonstrates Nyad’s greatness as a con artist — along with her more recent success convincing the press, public, and a handful of marathon swimmers that she swam from Cuba to Florida under her own power — are the first three words of the article’s title: “No-fear swimmer.”
