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.
Jay performed what appeared to be a miracle with Mackenzie the sole witness. She would later say her predominant feeling at that moment wasn’t astonishment but love. Yet, she knew that Jay did not perform a miracle, nor did he ever claim to. (Mackenzie describe the illusion at 1:29 in this video.)
Diana Nyad, who has lied continuously for over half a century, wants us to believe that she performed not one but two miracles: First, that she completed a legitimate but unprovable crossing from Cuba to Florida; second, that to complete her crossing, she stopped lying for three days in the middle of a 50-year fabrication spree. Diana wants us to believe she produced a block of ice out of thin air. After all, no one can prove she didn’t.
How The WOWSA Report Shows Diana Nyad Could Not Have Completed The Crossing Under Her Own Power
In an open letter posted to the Marathon Swimmers Federation (MSF) website, Evan Morrison, MSF co-founder and former Nyad skeptic, argued that we must separate our personal feelings about Nyad from the verifiable details of her crossing:
A swim is a set of facts, detailing an athletic feat. We must evaluate it as such, regardless of how we feel about Diana the person.
Beginning in July 2022, WOWSA set out to uncover and analyze as many of those facts as possible. The organization had recently concluded an investigation into Nejib Belhedi’s alleged crossing from Italy to Tunisia. Despite credible allegations that he cheated, he insisted that WOWSA would ratify his feat.
The organization learned, among other things, that Belhedi had spent 10 hours in the middle of the crossing on his guide boat. They also found unconvincing his claim to have slept for hours while swimming face down in the water.
Though WOWSA has never legitimately ratified, recognized, sanctioned, or approved Nyad’s crossing, Nyad has claimed it did. (I use ratified, recognized, sanctioned, and approved interchangeably. Steven Munatones, Nyad’s right-hand man and a former WOWSA board member, once surreptitiously changed her Openwaterpedia entry to read that WOWSA had ratified the crossing. However, her entry now reads that “Nyad’s Cuba-Florida crossing was never ratified.”)
In September 2022, WOWSA released a comprehensive report on Nyad’s crossing. It included an extraordinary amount of new or previously unavailable data: the original, handwritten observer logs; hundreds of images; interviews with Nyad, Munatones, and crew members; and much more.
Despite all that, Nyad was no closer to proving she completed a legitimate crossing. The newly available documentation does not prove, as Morrison has suggested it does, that Nyad completed the crossing under her own power. Instead, it provides substantial evidence that Nyad could not have swum from Cuba to Florida without help.
We need to start with the two people Nyad charged with ensuring the crossing’s legitimacy. Paradoxically, she spent far less time recruiting them than anyone else on her crew.
Nyad’s “Independent Observers”
If I planned to play fast and loose with every rule in the marathon swimming rulebook, I’d want observers like Janet Hinkle and Roger McVeigh: Respectable, well-meaning admirers who know almost nothing about the sport.
You have independent observers from the world of marathon swimming on the boat to make sure you never put on fins, you don’t wear a wetsuit, you’re not touching anything to support yourself.*
American Osteopathic Association
*Nyad often reframes the rules this way, boiling them down to three or four guidelines so obvious they go without saying. She gives her versions of the rules various legitimate-sounding titles, like “the basic tenets of fair swims” or “the fair, just, ethical and agreed-upon rules of our sport.” Meanwhile, she ignores the actual rules of marathon swimming.
Hinkle and McVeigh did not come from “the world of marathon swimming.” They were two acquaintances and fans of Nyad whom she contacted the morning her flotilla left for Cuba. They had no experience or training beyond “a brief note from Steve Munatones giving us some tips on observation.” The pair knew nothing about solo marathon swimming besides what they’d gleaned from Diana Nyad.
Hinkle and McVeigh were not independent, nor did they function as legitimate observers. Nyad used them as props. She brought them along so she could point at them and say, “Look, I had independent observers.”
Real observers have two fundamental responsibilities:
- Ensure the swimmer follows the rules.
- Document the crossing.
Regarding rules, Hinkle and McVeigh couldn’t ensure Nyad followed them because there weren’t any — until the crossing’s final 10 minutes or so. We’ll get to that later. As for documentation, Hinkle and McVeigh kept sloppy, haphazard notes. They were not the “absolute hawks” and “minute-by-minute” log-keepers of Nyad’s post-swim declarations:
They took copious accurate notes.
— press conference, 3 Sep 2013
The two independent observers (Roger McVeigh and Janet Hinkle) took detailed notes every minute of the crossing.
— email to Steven Munatones, 4 Sep 2013
I had met Roger and Janet in Key West, but they were not part of my crew and never paid. They agreed to be absolute hawks and observed everything that went on.
— ESPN Magazine
I posted all the data evidence online, along with the minute-by-minute logs from the two independent observers.
— Find a Way, p. 278
Transcribed versions of the logs became available shortly after the crossing. The originals only became public last year (thanks to WOWSA’s report).* The originals confirm that Hinkle and McVeigh sometimes went hours without mentioning the swimmer’s condition or making a single entry.
*Links to logs: McVeigh original, transcript; Hinkle original, transcript. Hinkle’s logs are more thorough and regular than McVeigh’s.
Regarding Independence
Hinkle, a philanthropist and experienced sailor, and McVeigh, an accountant who once completed a 20-kilometer race, would likely never question Diana. For instance, they might have wondered, “Why are you concerned about people touching you at the finish after crew members touched you throughout the crossing?” But their logs suggest that they didn’t see that as a contradiction.
Nyad and Munatones held a teleconference with experienced marathon swimmers a week after the crossing. One attendee suggested that her swim required credentialing to establish its validity. That should have been obvious to an experienced swimmer like Nyad, but she responded with a tantrum during which she blamed everyone but herself:
I didn’t get any emails from any of you from Marathon swimming or from the people I have known . . . to say, “You know what, if you do this thing, if you finally ever do it, you should really have someone from the Obama administration on board.”
Obama officials wouldn’t have helped unless they knew the sport. When Chloë McCardel assembled a crew for her 2013 Cuba–Florida attempt, she called on three experienced marathon swimmers/observers to oversee her crossing: Dan Simonelli, Jen Schumacher, and Grace Van Der Byl. Between them, they’ve completed 26 swims of over 20 kilometers, including five Catalina crossings, three Manhattan circumnavigations, and two English Channel swims. They’ve observed and crewed multiple swims. No one would question the legitimacy of a crossing that Simonelli, Schumacher, and Van Der Byl oversaw.
On the other hand, when Nyad used Hinkle and McVeigh, she guaranteed skepticism.
The Final Nine Hours:
Nothing On The Swimmer’s Condition But A Single Stroke Count
Nyad’s observers all but ignored their swimmer during the crossing’s last nine hours. WOWSA collated the observer and navigator logs into a single combined log. It shows that, except for one stroke count during hour 50, no entry addressed Nyad’s condition from hour 44 to the end of the crossing in hour 53.
According to an experienced observer I spoke with, “Most sanctioning organizations look for at least one stroke count per hour because it’s one of the best indicators of a swimmer’s condition.”
That hour-50 stroke count appeared during the crossing’s final observer shift. Though Roger McVeigh, the observer on duty, included nothing else about the swimmer’s condition during that shift, he provided plenty about Nyad’s fundamental concern: publicity. Media contacts rarely appear in logs, but McVeigh’s brims with them. He includes contact information for CNN, ABC, NPR, and the BBC (multiple times). He also scribbles down the New Jersey phone number for a man named William Gainss [sic].
Diana wants to make sure everyone pays attention. And when they do, she wants them to see something that resembles the end of a legitimate crossing.
Below are the three versions of Roger McVeigh’s logs from the crossing’s final observer shift. He came on duty just after 7 a.m. and finished when Nyad walked ashore almost seven hours later. Media contact information accounts for the majority of his handwritten log. The transcription omits all of it but for a brief mention.
When WOWSA asked McVeigh about the sparseness of his final-shift entries, he mentioned two short ones, “one at 11:39 am with Diana’s stroke count and [one] after when we were informed about landing protocol according to an email from Steve.” But you can see from the image that McVeigh doesn’t mention Steven’s email during the last shift, at least in the original log. That’s because it had arrived two days earlier, minutes after Nyad jumped into Cuban waters and began swimming toward Florida. McVeigh notes its arrival during his first shift, but only in the handwritten log:
Steve M. sending details on rules of swim finish to Alex & Dreams via email instructed to print out and & bring copy to Voyager. (pp 29-30)
In the transcription, Steven’s email migrates to the final shift, a more logical spot for landing instructions. Whoever created the transcription — it might not have been McVeigh because parts of it are written in the third person — may have assumed the original log would never surface, so it felt safe to move some things and omit others.
The Storm
At about 11 p.m. on the second night of the crossing, a storm overtook Nyad’s flotilla. Nyad’s crew went into storm protocol: Kayaks and kayakers were taken out of the water, leaving only the swimmer and shark divers; the flotilla spread out with the four support boats downwind of the guide boat, Voyager.
The storm lasted approximately 80–90 minutes — from about 11 p.m. Sunday until about 12:30 a.m. Monday. I say “about” and “approximately” because accounts of the storm’s duration and Nyad’s actions differ. In an interview with Tavis Smiley a few months after the crossing, Nyad said she treaded water the whole time:
SMILEY: “You tread water for an hour and 20 minutes?”
NYAD: “Yeah, and I was hanging on.”
— The Tavis Smiley Show, 31 Dec 2013
But Nyad’s navigator, John Bartlett, said, “She did breaststroke to keep warm and rested.” A shark diver told crew member Lois Porter a different story. He said Nyad swam so quickly during the storm that they had trouble keeping up with her. But Nyad’s GPS data shows her heading straight for Key West at the same speed she maintained for at least two hours before the storm and at least an hour afterward. In the real world, that makes no sense.
To impose some sense on the nonsensical, WOWSA included in its combined log the number of images and video clips available for each hour of the crossing. They intended to show they found photographic and/or video evidence for every hour of Nyad’s feat.
But no such evidence exists to verify Nyad’s actions during the storm. The report cites a video from that period, but the footage doesn’t show the swimmer. The report also lists a pair of photos, but the first shows two shark divers on board a boat, and the second — time-stamped 11:45 pm — looks like a still from the video.
What’s more, no media shows Nyad in the water at all from hours 35 through 41:
After the Storm: Conflicts About Nyad Going Under The Boat
Last year, WOWSA’s advisory team reviewed the available documentation to decide whether or not to ratify Nyad’s crossing. A team member noticed a discrepancy in the documentation for the crossing’s 40th hour, the hour after the storm. During that hour, Nyad disappears. We get three conflicting stories about what happens next:
- NYAD’S VERSION: Bonnie saves the day.
“When I lose track and mistakenly swim up behind Voyager and disappear under her two pontoons, coming dangerously close to being shredded by the rear engine blades, Bonnie puts a halt to the action.” (Find a Way, p. 263) - YANIGIHARA’S VERSION: Dr. Angel saves the day.
“I dove under the starboard pontoon and intercepted Diana to get her to the bow.” (Yanigihara’s statement in “Behind Boat – Hour 40,” part of the “Detailed Analysis” section of the WOWSA report) - HINKLE’S VERSION: Nico saves the day.
“She’s under the boat. Nico coming in.” (Hinkle’s original log)
“She is behind the boat and there is concern she has gotten under the boat. Nico jumps in to find her behind the boat. He coaxes her back to the red rope light.” (Hinkle’s elaboration in her transcribed log)
Again, we have no photographic or video evidence to corroborate any of the stories.
Note: After WOWSA’s review, the organization concluded that the hour-40 discrepancy and other issues made it impossible to ratify Nyad’s crossing. See “Report on the Diana Nyad Cuba-Florida Swim (2013) Issues Index.”
Breaks: No Swimmer Spends This Much Time Not Swimming
Nyad says she limits the length of her feeding breaks to about three minutes so she won’t get dragged too far eastward:
“So, you stop very quick. And you’ve got a Gulf Stream, and it’s going that way, east, and you’re going north. So, anytime you stop, you’re getting dragged east, east, east.”
— New Yorker Festival
“Every time I stopped for that little sip of fuel for three minutes, get myself together, I’m being dragged due east, and this whole swim is about north, north, north, north, north.”
— SafetyCulture Global Summit, 2021
“So you can stop anytime you want. You can stop for three minutes, you can stretch out your back, move your shoulders around, take a look at the sky, take down your drink as slowly as you want.”
— American Osteopathic Association
But according to the logs, Nyad’s average stop lasted about 17 minutes — 20 if we factor in the storm. I bet no one ever completed a legitimate swim by spending as much time not swimming as Diana Nyad. What’s more, Diana continued on her beeline toward Key West during her stops. Her GPS data shows no significant eastward movement at any time during her crossing.
“My Emergence Is What It’s All About”
For Nyad, the finish is everything:
People have spent the whole day waiting. From a mile out I can hear the clapping and screaming. . . . They share with me the most extreme moment of all — for after the pain, the cold, the hours, the distance, after the fatigue and the loneliness, after all this comes my emergence. And my emergence is what it’s all about. (Esquire, 1975)
But the finish of Nyad’s Cuba crossing — the best-documented part of the swim — was a charade. Crew members, observers, and the Key West police used their bodies to clear a passage so Diana could reach the sand untouched; Roger McVeigh spread his arms wide and yelled, “Stay back!” while Bonnie shouted, “No one can touch her until she’s out of the water.”
Yet, Nyad had been touched throughout the attempt. So why would it matter if one or two or ten people touched her as she walked up the beach? It mattered because Diana needed the end of her crossing to resemble the finish of a legitimate marathon swim.
Just over two years earlier — on August 5, 2011 — Steven Munatones posted a blog entry he called “Official Finish Of An Open Water Swim.” The gist: No one can touch the swimmer as she leaves the water. Nyad reposted the entry the same day, retitling it, “Here are the official rules of the swim!” Two days later, she set out from Cuba to begin her first attempt to cross the Florida Straits since 1978. In other words, beginning with her 2011 attempt, Diana’s “official rules” have amounted to a single one: No one can touch her when the media and public are watching.
Miracles
We want to believe in miracles. We wanted to believe that a young and charismatic entrepreneur could revolutionize medical testing, a stage 4 cancer survivor could become the greatest cyclist in history, and a 64-year-old athlete could swim 110 miles under her own power from Havana, Cuba, to Key West, Florida, on a line as straight as Bernie Madoff’s investment returns.
Holmes, Armstrong, and Madoff would have continued lying indefinitely while proclaiming that no one could prove they cheated. It took journalists, whistleblowers, a USADA investigation, and the 2008 recession to finally bring them down.
“There is no evidence that [Nyad] cheated,” wrote Evan Morrison in his open letter. “There is no evidence that she snuck onto a boat under cover of darkness. There is no evidence that she was surreptitiously towed by a rope.” Armstrong put it differently: “Extraordinary accusations must be followed up with extraordinary proof.” To paraphrase, “Unless you can prove I cheated, get out of my face.” But Armstrong’s statement corrupts Carl Sagan’s adage, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” In other words, the burden of proof rests with Nyad, not on those who believe she cheated.
Diana can’t prove she completed a legitimate crossing. The WOWSA report demonstrates that. It provides an extraordinary amount of evidence, but none of it gets Nyad closer to proving a legitimate swim. Instead, WOWSA’s evidence goes a long way toward proving she couldn’t have completed the crossing without substantial help.
Nyad created the illusion of a legitimate swim. We don’t yet know how she created that illusion, and we may never find out. A magician never reveals her secrets.
Appendix: The First Nyad Report
This post is largely an elaboration on work WOWSA and marathon swimmer/business consultant Anthony McCarley have already done. In 2015, at the behest of a Nyad supporter, McCarley collated all the then-available documentation of Nyad’s crossing. The resulting timeline and his commentary became the first Nyad report.
In a public discussion of his findings, McCarley wrote that
the documents have so many gaps, have so many contradictions, and raise so many questions, that I do not believe any objective reading would allow any unbiased person to believe the event was completed. (Marathon Swimmers Forum, 24 Jan 2016)
McCarley’s report includes a list of questions that the documentation couldn’t answer then and can’t answer now. I’ve included lightly edited versions of McCarley’s questions below, along with his concluding notes. (See report pages 21–24.)
Questions
- Navigator Inconsistency: Since the current was the key to the swim – according to these records, a bigger impact than the swimmer’s effort (the swimmer was able to travel at 3 to 7 times faster in the current than earlier in the swim & entry 78) – how was the navigator able to utilize that current so precisely for so long and at the same time miscalculate the finish time so significantly?
- Unexplained And Inexplicable Miraculous Recovery On Night Two: Between Hour 40 and Hour 44, the swimmer was described as “a bit delirious,” the swimmer was vomiting, the swimmer was switching to breaststroke, the doctors expressed concern about the swimmer’s condition, there was “a lot of stress,” there is “more confusion,” the swimmer is “veering right,” the swimmer is “bobbing in the water,” the swimmer is thought to be under the boat, the swimmer was found behind the boat, and the navigator states “she is running on fumes” — in other words, a lot was going wrong. From this point on (for the remainder of the event), there is no other official description of the swimmer or observer distance and/or speed updates. In fact, it appears that there may be a gap between Hour 44 and Hour 46 when no observer was on duty. The only description of the swimmer comes from an unofficial entry five hours later (hour 49) when the swimmer gives a fleet-wide speech. How can one not question this series of events?
- Selection of Inexperienced Observers: When such experienced and respected observers were used on [Nyad’s] previous attempts, with the time and funds committed to organizing this event (a “fleet” of boats, multiple physicians, a jellyfish expert, shark divers, specialized suit, specialized mask), what was the reason for the swimmer and the swimmer’s team selecting inexperienced observers for this event? [Though Nyad has given reasons for this, those reasons don’t make sense if she intended for others in the sport to take her crossing seriously — Ed.]
Based on the official documents, one can choose to believe this swim was completed by:
- Seeing beyond all gaps in reporting,
- Overlooking that a navigator who could precisely navigate a fast-moving current could not accurately predict the end of the swim,
- Ignoring that the event ended hours sooner than every navigator prediction,
- Accepting that a swimmer can transition from delirious and “running on fumes” to giving an inspiring speech by swimming an additional five hours,
- Disregarding the importance of selecting inexperienced observers (it is not the fault of the observers for being inexperienced),
- Agreeing it is possible for a swimmer who had been swimming at less than 1.0 mph to later travel at 3.91 mph for 5.5 hours and 3.27 mph for 17 hours, trusting that the timing of the significant reduction in observer and navigator entries was coincidental.
Acknowledgments
I’m indebted to WOWSA and Anthony McCarley for all the work they’ve done investigating Nyad’s crossing. I’m also grateful to many other individuals who helped with this post, both by answering questions and providing moral support. I couldn’t possibly name every one of you, and you probably wouldn’t want me to anyway.
Thank you all!