The Truth About Diana Nyad
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:
Diana spoke at Zibby’s Bookshop in Santa Monica on Thursday night. Nyad called herself charismatic and visionary. And, as usual, she lied.
Diana Nyad spoke with film producer Teddy Schwarzman last Thursday at his sister Zibby’s bookstore. Teddy founded and now presides over Black Bear Pictures, one of the production companies involved with NYAD. Teddy’s sister opened her bookshop a year ago in a high-end Santa Monica shopping district.
(Teddy and Zibby’s father, financier Stephen Schwarzman, is the chairman and CEO of the Blackstone Group. As of February 27, 2024, he’s worth 37.9 billion USD, up about 400 million since Diana spoke with his son.)
Here are a few of the absurdities and lies Diana served at Zibby’s bookshop last week.
