Category: Lies

Last week, Diana Nyad spoke with Marty Moss-Coane of Philadelphia public radio station WHYY. Their chat, “Long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad gets real about living her best life,” which aired on October 31, will likely be her last published interview before she unveils her Florida State Historic Marker on November 6. She seized the opportunity to lie her burning pants off in a way only Diana Nyad can. She told some new lies and cranked some of her old ones well beyond 11.

Sources:

• B&B – “Finding a Way with Diana Nyad,” Books & Beyond podcast, Episode 9, Winter Park Library in Winter Park, Florida, host Michael Werner, 2 Jul 2024.
• Blaine – “David Blaine and Diana Nyad on the Art of Endurance,” Outside podcast, 9 Jul 2025.
• CTF – “Diana Nyad: The Courage To Fail,” The Terryberry Co., host Ashley Owen, 5 Sep 2024.
• LIF – “A Lesson In Fortitude,” Aspire magazine, Spring 2021.
• SEC – “The Secret Behind Diana Nyad’s Incredible 53-hour Swim,” Big Think, 22 Jan 2025.
• UNS – “Unstoppable Spirit: A Conversation with Diana Nyad on Resilience, Dreams, and the Power of Perseverance,” Authority Magazine, 3 Jan 2025.

Diana’s Biological Threat Assessments

My Jelly’s Meaner And Faster Than Yours

Nyad says that the box jellyfish can kill with just the touch of a tentacle. Not so the Portuguese man o’ war:

Nobody has ever died from the Portuguese man o’ war sting. (B&B, 57:50)

Nobody in the history of mankind has ever died directly from a Portuguese man o’ war sting . . . And it swims faster than a human, the only jellyfish that swims and propels itself on its own. (CTF, 32:50)

In other words, she battled the Diana Nyad of jellyfish, the most stupendous jelly on the planet. In a later interview, Nyad says, “They call [the box jelly] the perfect killing machine.” “They” is Diana Nyad, the same singular “they” who calls the Florida Straits the Mount Everest of the earth’s oceans. The plural “they” can’t decide on a perfect killing machine. I found votes for sharks, mosquitoes, saltwater crocodiles, and cats.

Deaths from Portuguese man o’ war stings are rare, but they happen. Bonnie may have googled it for her BFF; in the “perfect killing machine” interview, Nyad says that Portuguese man o’war stings are “not usually fatal.”

Most jellyfish species propel themselves. But not the Portuguese man o’ war. That boneless lazybones has a sail and goes wherever the wind takes him. And he’s not even a real jellyfish!

“As a child growing up in Fort Lauderdale, Diana Nyad was a champion pool swimmer.”

Nyad won the Florida High School Class A title in the 100-yard backstroke in 1964 and 1967. That was the extent of her championship pool swimming. In neither year was she the fastest high-schooler in Florida, and many young women nationwide were far faster.

The Facts

• 1964
  Nyad swam 1:10.4 to win the Florida High School Class A title in the 100-yard backstroke. Pat Fleming of Pompano Beach High School took the 2A division in 1:07.3. Cathy Ferguson of Los Angeles won the U.S. Nationals in 1:01.4.
• 1967
  Nyad swam 1:06.7 to win her second Class A 100-yard backstroke title. In other races that year, at least two other Floridians went faster: Nyad’s teammate Nancy Fisher went 1:06.0, and 12-year-old Libby Tullis swam 1:05.1. Kaye Hall of Tacoma, Washington, won the U.S. Nationals in 1:01.6.

Nyad didn’t swim fast enough to qualify for the Nationals in either of those years. In 1964, 38 swimmers qualified in the 100 back and 37 in the 200. In 1967, 46 qualified in the 100 and 39 in the 200. All of them swam faster than Nyad.

She qualified for the Nationals twice in other years:

• 1966 Short Course Nationals in Bartlesville, Oklahoma
  • Nyad swam 1:05.2 to place 19^th in the 100-yard back. Fifteen-year-old Canadian Elaine Tanner, a.k.a. “Mighty Mouse,” won the event in 1:00.7.
  • Nyad swam 2:35.5 to place 16^th in the 200 back. Fifteen-year-old Judy Humbarger of Miami Shores won in 2:11.8.
• 1968 short course nationals at the University of Pittsburgh
  • Nyad finished 36th in the 200-yard back in 2:22.7. Kaye Hall of Tacoma, Washington, finished first in 2:10.8. Hall went on to win a bronze medal in the 200 at the Mexico City Olympics and take gold while setting a world record in the 100.

Nyad knows her resume doesn’t support labeling herself “a champion pool swimmer,” so she often lies about her record. A few examples:

See this spreadsheet for all of Nyad’s available meet results from 1962 through 1968.

“[She] became one of the most renowned ocean swimmers in the world.”

Nyad’s renown comes not from her accomplishments but from her gift for PR.

The International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame maintains a list of swimming accomplishments they call “The Majors.” Diana Nyad has completed four of them and won two. Only one of them, a race from Capri to Naples, took place in the ocean.

Nyad never finished a single major solo ocean swim. She once claimed that she completed and broke records in them all:

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. (Wilshire Ebell—audio clip)

See “The Best of the ’70s” for sources and data.

An Alternative To Diana

World-record setter Katherine Rawls is a Fort Lauderdale swimmer worthy of a Florida State Historical Marker. No one needs to exaggerate Rawls’ accomplishments:

• • She was an inaugural inductee into the International Swimming Hall of Fame (ISHOF).
  • She won U.S. National championships in both swimming and diving. She also won Olympic medals in both sports.
  • She lived in Fort Lauderdale and trained in the ISHOF’s Casino Pool in the 1930s. She officially opened the Hall’s new pool in 1965.
  • A trained pilot, she retired from swimming in 1940 to fly military transport planes with the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron.

No one deserves a Florida State Historical Marker more than Katherine Rawls.