Three Reasons No Governing Organization Will Ever Ratify Nyad’s Crossing
We didn’t want an asterisk next to the swim. But if anybody wants to ratify it now and stamp it assisted, we can accept it. Because we did it fair and square, no help in any way.
In 2019, Diana Nyad began hunting for an organization that would ratify her crossing. She tried the World Open Water Swimming Association (WOWSA) and the International Swimming Hall of Fame (ISHOF). No luck. By 2023, with her biopic nearing release, she was desperate for some official acknowledgment, even if it meant accepting an asterisk. Again, nobody bit.
Below are three reasons they never will.* The first reason may make sense only to experienced marathon swimmers. The second should make sense to everyone. The third — the farce at the finish — shouldn’t make sense to anyone. I’ve made these arguments before, but new photographic and video evidence reinforces and expands the arguments. I suspect there’s a lot more evidence out there, but Nyad has good reason to withhold it: new material always exposes new deception.
*For more on why Nyad’s crossing is unratifiable, see WOWSA’s “Report on the Diana Nyad Cuba-Florida Swim (2013) Issues Index” and its ratification denial. Both documents supplement the organization’s exhaustive and essential report on Nyad’s crossing.
Reason #1 – She touched and pushed off her guide boat, probably many more times than we know.
Don McCumber, one of Nyad’s kayakers, videoed the swim with a GoPro. He published some of the footage on his YouTube page, and part of it shows Nyad taking an 11-minute, 8-second break. She spends much of the break up against the hull of Voyager, though she has said that she’s allowed no closer to the boat than three or four feet. The sport has no such rule. But it has one about touching the boat: You can’t do it. If you do, you’re disqualified.
During the break, Nyad touches the boat several times. In the most conspicuous example, she touches the boat with her foot and pushes off:
Above: During a break early in Nyad’s crossing, she places her foot on Voyager’s hull and pushes off. She would have been disqualified during a legitimate swim.
No legitimate marathon swimmer would have kicked off the boat and expected to continue swimming. Nyad knows this. Four days after her crossing, she wrote on Facebook, “We did not break one rule. I never of course touched a boat or another person.” Nyad eventually admitted that she touched people, but she never admitted to touching the boat. Were she to do so, she’d lose what little credibility she had with other marathon swimmers. “I never touched the boat,” she told Reuters ten days after the crossing, “not even an inadvertent touch.”
Crew member Pauline Berry, on the left in the clip, participated in Nyad’s 2019 quest for ratification. “I can honestly say,” Berry testified in writing, “she never touched the boats.” Similar statements came from other crew members:
Dee Brady, Voyager’s captain: “At no time did she ever touch Voyager.”
Nancy Kistler, Voyager driver: “At no time did I witness her touch, or hold on to, anything, or anyone.”
Bruce Blomgren, Voyager driver: “She didn’t touch the boat or anyone.”
Dr. Angel Yanagihara, Nyad’s jellyfish expert, ended her testimonial letter with:
I affirm that the statements above are completely accurate and reflect well articulated rules of the swim (no touching the vessel, no buoyancy assistance or forward motion help).
McCumber’s video is the only one we have of a break from start to finish. I assume that Nyad didn’t change her behavior for other breaks. And her crew would have remained blind to Nyad’s rule-breaking throughout. Crews for legitimate marathon swims include people familiar with the sport, people who are often marathon swimmers themselves. Nyad deliberately avoided such individuals; anyone with marathon-swimming experience would have known the swim ended the moment Nyad touched the boat.
Reason #2 – Diana Nyad spent so much time not swimming that she couldn’t have completed a legitimate crossing.
The last time I wrote about Nyad’s breaks, I identified 17 stops totaling 5 hours and 45 minutes. The new evidence increases the number of known breaks to 26 and the stoppage time to over 6 hours. That’s a conservative estimate because:
- I calculate 9 of the break lengths using data embedded in a break’s first and last images. Nyad’s photographer, Dawn Blomgren, didn’t usually take a photo the moment a break began and ended, so the actual breaks lasted longer than the calculated times.
- At least two breaks are likely far longer than the estimates:
- When Nyad removed her stinger suit on the last day, it probably took at least 30 minutes. But the observer on duty, Roger McVeigh, didn’t log a word about Nyad removing her suit, and the photographic evidence shows only 7 minutes of the process.
- Break numbers 24 and 25, which last a total of 6 minutes and 18 seconds, are likely a single break of over 18 minutes. I can’t be certain, though, because Blomgren took some non-swimming-related images in between.
- Roger McVeigh and the other observer, Janet Hinkle, didn’t log every break. McVeigh, in particular, paid little attention to breaks. He had the watch for 60% of the time but logged far fewer breaks than Hinkle. McVeigh came on duty for the final observer shift at 7:15 am on September 2. During that shift, which included five photo-identified stops, McVeigh didn’t log a single break.
Diana Nyad spent so much time not swimming that she couldn’t have completed a legitimate crossing.
Above: Spreadsheet showing all of Nyad’s known breaks. View on Google Sheets.
Reason #3 – The Fraudulent Finish
Any legitimate sporting event has rules. Nyad’s had none, at least before the crossing. After the crossing, she said,
The rules of the sport are such that you may not receive any aid at any time, in either moving forward or in staying afloat. (Find a Way, p. 74)
Those aren’t the rules of the sport, but she repeated them so often that the press and public believed her. Nyad did publish one rule before her first attempt of the 2010s, she posted, “Here are the official rules of the swim!” It read in part:
Officially, the swimmer must ‘clear the water’ under their own power without assistance from any other individual.
Nyad copied “Here are the official rules” verbatim from Steven Munatones’ blog entry, “Official Finish Of An Open Water Swim.” In other words, Diana took Steven’s “official finish” rule — the swimmer must clear the water without help — and made it the one rule of the entire crossing. The only thing that mattered was maintaining an illusion of legitimacy at the end.
No one stated Nyad’s rule louder than John Berry, her 2013 operations chief. On the crossing’s final morning, Berry shouted:
Diana, a reminder so that you know [that] everyone knows: No one touches her until she is out of the water completely, and Bonnie is the first person to touch her. [cheers]
Above: After almost 50 hours of swimming, a perky Diana Nyad gathered her crew to thank them for their services. Directly afterward, operations chief John Berry reminded everyone not to touch Diana while the cameras rolled.
At the finish a few hours later, Bonnie Stoll, Nyad’s best friend and head handler, yells:
“DON’T TOUCH HER! STAY BACK! SHE’LL BE DISQUALIFIED IF ANYBODY TOUCHES HER! STAY BACK!” (272)
In Find a Way, Nyad writes about her no-touch finish:
My Team has jumped off the boats in advance, and they now form two human walls, to make sure nobody touches me with even an innocent brush of a shoulder or a finger until I am, as the rule states, “where no more sea water lies beyond.” (272)
At the post-swim press conference the next day, Diana describes the stakes of disturbing the illusion.
It was very important that no one touch me ’cause you’re disqualified. After ALL that, somebody comes up and hugs you and says, “great job.” DONE!
By the time she got to Key West, Nyad had been touched hundreds of times. She’d probably say that she needed the crew to touch her for safety reasons. But in marathon swimming, there’s no difference between therapeutic and non-therapeutic touch. Touching is touching. So it wouldn’t have mattered if John Berry hoisted Nyad onto his shoulders and piggybacked her through the shallows. Or if she’d received 50 hugs before crossing the high-tide line. Diana manufactured a fraudulent spectacle to convince the press and public (and book publishers and booking agencies and filmmakers and podcast hosts) that she’d completed a legitimate crossing.
But she didn’t fool anyone who knew anything about the sport. Despite her statements to the contrary, no aquatics governing organization has ever recognized her crossing. Her International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame biography doesn’t list it. Her attempts to coerce WOWSA and the ISHOF into recognizing her crossing went nowhere. If you listen only to the press, the public, Diana, and her supporters, you’d have to conclude that she completed a record-breaking crossing from Cuba to Florida under her own power, fair and square, cross her heart and hope to die.
If you listen to marathon swimming organizations, you hear silence. Her crossing never happened. No swim, no record, no asterisk.
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