Evan Agonistes: The Anatomy Of A Betrayal

The World Open Water Swimming Association (WOWSA) posted its “Diana Nyad Cuba–Florida 2013 Swim Report” on August 21, 2022. Not until the Nyad biopic’s publicity push began a year later did Marathon Swimmers Federation co-founder Evan Morrison begin publicly defending Diana. I’ve gathered data from multiple online sources to pinpoint when Morrison flipped. What follows uses Morrison’s 2013 post, “Nyad Agonistes: The anatomy of a social media campaign” (archived), as a model.

2022

Aug 21 – WOWSA publishes Morrison’s “convincing documentation.”
WOWSA posts its “Diana Nyad Cuba–Florida 2013 Swim Report.” It contains new video, images, logs, crew member statements, and more.

Sep  2 – “How Dare You?!!!”
I post “How Dare You?!!!!”: What Happened When A Skeptic Challenged Diana Nyad On Her Home Turf”  to the Diana Nyad Fact Check Annex blog. The post describes how Nyad’s acolytes attacked swimmer Lisa Amorao when she called Nyad’s crossing a fraud. Morrison and the Marathon Swimmers Federation began hosting the blog in 2017. “How Dare You?!!!!” is one of 20 entries I publish between September 2, 2022, and mid-September 2023. Morrison’s support never wavers.

Most of the 20 posts address Nyad’s lies and those of Steven Munatones, one of the few experienced marathon swimmers who support Nyad. He’s been her fixer and most prominent evangelist since she returned to swimming in 2010.

Sep 23–Oct 19 – Evan tweets about marathon swimming hucksters.
Morrison tweets 20 or so times about integrity in marathon swimming, likely provoked by British stunt-swimmer Ross Edgley’s pronouncements about world records. Morrison’s tweets apply as much to Nyad as they do to Edgley. Three examples:

Dec 5 – Munatones creates the “Free Solo (Confidential)” entry in Openwaterpedia.
In 2019, someone vandalized over 3000 entries on Openwaterpedia, Steven Munatones’ “Wikipedia for the open water swimming world.” The vandalism had a single goal: to make Diana Nyad look like one of the top three marathon swimmers of the 1970s. When I discovered the vandalism, I figured that Munatones was responsible. But he changed so many pages so quickly that I assumed he needed expert help. “Free Solo (Confidential)” and its offspring will prove he didn’t need help.

In “Free Solo (Confidential),” Munatones writes that, on September 7, 2022, he completed “a free solo [Catalina] channel crossing.” If this were true, it would be the first and only Catalina crossing done without a support boat or crew.

Munatones never publicly announced the crossing. But Morrison kept track of Openwaterpedia changes, so he saw the new entry and told me about it. (Though Morrison sent this tip in a personal message, I mention it here because he made public claims about it that his private messages contradict. I’ll allude to several other personal messages for the same reason. I wouldn’t have learned about “Free Solo (Confidential)” or many of Munatones’ other deceptions without Morrison’s tips.)

Dec 9 – I email Munatones about “Free Solo (Confidential).”
I ask him if it’s true that he’d free-soloed Catalina. He blanks the page the same day.

Dec 18–23 – I upload five posts to the Diana Nyad Fact Check blog.
I wanted to upload one for every night of Hanukkah, but I couldn’t keep up. Still, five was enough to infuriate Munatones:

Dec 30 – Munatones creates the Openwaterpedia entry, “WhydoesdanslosbergtrollswimmersandtellliesaboutDianaNyad.”
In the process, he posts 56 entries in 10 minutes, proving that he had the speed to vandalize Openwaterpedia all by himself.

He begins by adding a page called “W,” then “Wh,” then “Why,” etc., ending 56 pages later with “Whydoesdan . . . .”

Two hours later, Munatones reposts “Free Solo (Confidential)” as “For Skolnick,”  after a journalist-friend of his. All other proper names are either changed or removed. For instance, “Steven Munatones” becomes “Michael Chavez,”  “The boat The Mas Pesos” becomes “the boat,” and the boat’s captain, Charlie Louch, disappears.

2023

Mar 2 – I post “Free Solo Confidential: How The Openwaterpedia Vandal Gave Himself Away.”
I explain how Munatones’ overreaction to my email proves that he had the ability and temperament to vandalize Openwaterpedia. In the Marathon Swimmers Forum, Evan compliments the post:

May 9 – Nyad biopic letter.
I send a letter about Nyad’s deceit to people involved in her biopic, including directors, producers, and others. Evan helped me write it and later asks about responses.

May 15 – WOWSA ousts founder Steven Munatones.
WOWSA states that his departure was “amicable.”

May 18 – Munatones circulates a doctored version of the WOWSA report.
He emails the recipients of my letter and attaches a redacted version of the report. Evan tells me about Steven’s actions that same day.

May 24 – Thanks to the upcoming biopic, awareness of Nyad’s deceit begins to move beyond the marathon swimming community.
SwimSwam publishes Riley Overend’s, “Open Water Swimmers Have Mixed Feelings About New ‘Nyad’ Biopic Coming to Netflix.” Overend’s article is the first outside of the marathon swimming community to address the community’s “mixed feelings” since 2013. The article goes online nine months after the arrival of Morrison’s “convincing documentation of the feat.” He has yet to defend Nyad.

Jun 8–9 – Morrison sends me a screenshot of Shelley Taylor-Smith’s “conniving, cheating, evil people” Facebook post. Taylor-Smith is an Australian marathon swimmer friendly with both Nyad and Munatones. Morrison says that, among “the conniving evil cheaters she [Taylor-Smith] refers to are you, and probably me. . . . Congratulations.” So, not only is Morrison not defending Nyad, but Nyad still sees Morrison as an enemy.

Jun 9–Jul 23 – I can’t be sure where Evan stands.
On July 22, Wikipedia user Mvp427 adds a Guinness World Record to Nyad’s Wikipedia entry. I remove it, replacing it with the original text: “[T]he swim has not been ratified by any marathon swimming governing body.” I message Evan about this, and he responds: “haha wow, they thought they’d sneak that by!” (I realize later that Mvp427 must be Victoria Price, Nyad’s webmaster and friend, born on 4/27.)

Jul 14 – SAG-AFTRA members begin their strike.
SAG-AFTRA prohibits its member from promoting the Nyad biopic during the strike. The biopic’s PR team likely went looking for surrogates. Knowledge of marathon swimming and respect within the sport would look good on a potential surrogate’s resume.

Jul 23 – Morrison has compromised himself.
A reliable source informs me that they have evidence Morrison flipped by this date.

Jul 26 – First Public Evidence That Morrison Has Compromised Himself.
In a Marathon Swimmers Federation Facebook discussion, he excoriates WOWSA’s former developer and says that Munatones did not hack Openwaterpedia. The developer reminds Morrison that Munatones wouldn’t sign the WOWSA dissolution agreement unless it included a non-disclosure clause. That clause reads like a confession:

[All parties] agree to maintain the confidentiality of any information related to Steven Munatones’ edits on Openwaterpedia in 2019, as well as any related allegations of fraud or vandalism by Steven Munatones.

Quinn Fitzgerald, the current head of WOWSA, later sues Munatones for breaking the dissolution agreement. In Fitzgerald’s complaint, he describes Munatones’ vandalism:

Plaintiff is informed and believes and thereon alleges that Defendant Munatones acted surreptitiously to alter over 3,300 records on www.openwaterpedia.com, which records appeared to have a bearing on the swimming career of Diana Nyad, and did so in an apparent effort to enhance the public perception of the swimming career of Diana Nyad before submittal of her application for admission to the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame.

Aug 30 – LA Times publishes “Netflix has Oscar hopes for its Diana Nyad biopic. But swimmer’s exaggerations cast a pall.”
Morrison appears in the article, functioning as part of Nyad’s public relations team. Morrison rambles about Nyad’s reputation. He’s possibly trying to preserve some credibility while obscuring his betrayal:

“It’s hard to say in a sport like this who is the best but certainly back in the 1970s, Diana was one of the best,” says Evan Morrison, who co-founded the Marathon Swimmers Federation in 2012. “She is a legit marathon swimmer and she’s done a lot. But her celebrity is disproportionate to her objective swimming achievements. People may have different opinions about who they think has accomplished more — and maybe that’s not Diana in a lot of cases. But Diana is the one who’s getting the film, and Diana is the one who gets the money and the fame.”

“I may not appreciate the way she promotes herself and exaggerates her accomplishments. It bothers me aesthetically and as a marathon swimmer. But my aim has never been to tear her down. I’ve been focused on demanding appropriate documentation, and it’s frustrating that didn’t happen for nine years.”

“Now, having seen the report,” Morrison says, “There’s no evidence there was any kind of cheating. From my perspective, according to the current standards of the sport, she did an assisted swim from Cuba to Florida.”

Aug 30 – I post “New Evidence That Steven Munatones’ Nonsensical Openwaterpedia Vandalism Makes Sense.”
I show how Munatones used Openwaterpedia not just to ratify Diana Nyad’s crossing and make her look like one of the best marathon swimmers of the 1970s; he also forged records for himself and another marathon swimmer (without her knowledge).

Aug 31 – Morrison publishes “On NYAD: An open letter to the marathon swimming community.”
In this condescending and duplicitous manifesto, Morrison comes out as a Nyad shill. He decides for the entire community that it’s “time to move on.”

Sep 1 – Nyad has its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival.

Oct 4 – Defector quotes Morrison as he begins his online harassment campaign.
Morrison appears in Defector as part of Nyad’s PR team again. He tells Defector that “he had been asked by Nyad’s PR staff to make the call in support of Nyad.” Again, Morrison equivocates to camouflage his betrayal:

I’m not trying to defend her falsely claiming to be in the Olympic trials or the first person to swim around Manhattan. I think we have to consider her body of work in context. She made these statements, and she did the [Cuba] swim. Both things are possible. There’s this film coming out, and the film is about the 2013 swim. The goal [of Slosberg] seems to be to convince everybody that the swim was a fraud and this film is based on fiction. In my opinion, the Cuba swim was real.

In a Facebook discussion of the Defector article, Morrison elaborates on his motivation for contacting McKenna:

A representative of Diana reached out to me after reading my “Open Letter” post and made me aware that a writer, Dave McKenna, was preparing a hit piece with Daniel Slosberg as his primary source. I reached out to Dave because I hoped it would give him a more balanced perspective on Diana and her Cuba swim.

On social media, Morrison harasses and abuses everyone who disagrees with him. Examples:

Personal attacks (insults and name-calling)

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Shaming

Gate-keeping

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Legal threats, character assassination

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Shouting “conspiracy theory” when faced with threatening truths puts Morrison in excellent company. See also Lance Armstrong’s doping guru, Italian physician Michele Ferrari in “USADA Conspiracy?”; and the current U.S. Commander-in-Chief: “The election is being rigged by corrupt media pushing completely false allegations and outright lies.”

Sealioning

According to media critic Anita Sarkeesian, sealioning happens when a troll “pops into your conversation and peppers you with unsolicited and insincere questions.” Linguistic anthropologist Amy Johnson calls sealioning “an intentional, combative performance of cluelessness,” a type of “denial of service (DoS) attack . . . aimed at humans rather than servers.”

Morrison is a sealioning savant:

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About the gap: From hour 44 to the end of her Cuba-Florida crossing, so for the last nine hours, Nyad’s observers log nothing about her condition other than a single stroke count. Observers would usually note the swimmer’s condition every 30 to 60 minutes. Nyad knows the importance of detailed logs for swim verification; two days after the crossing, she told Steven Munatones that “the two independent observers (Roger McVeigh and Janet Hinkle) took detailed notes every minute of the crossing.” She then asked where to send those notes, presumably as precursor to ratification.

WOWSA cited the nine-hour gap as one of multiple reasons it couldn’t ratify Nyad’s endeavor. (The “every minute of the crossing” email came to light in 2022 as part of WOWSA’s Nyad report.)

Oct 20 – Nyad opens in theaters for a two-week Oscar-consideration run.
Nov 3 – Nyad begins streaming on Netflix.

Nov 4 – Morrison claims he’s been defending Nyad since last August.
He replies to Stuart McDougal during a Facebook discussion (archived) about the biopic:

Morrison continues badgering McDougal throughout the 10-day discussion. After Morrison claims he has reams of new evidence about Nyad’s crossing, McDougal asks him to share it. Morrison replies:

Are you offering to help? It’s thousands of files, over 80GB in total, with more coming in each day. It’s going to take a little while to process and format for public consumption. [screenshot]

A few hours later, Morrison adds that he’s

working with Diana and her team to compile the full documentation and publish it so people can move beyond this sham WOWSA non-ratification and understand all the details of the swim.

You can wait along with everyone else. Good luck. [screenshot]

We’re still waiting. To paraphrase a comment Morrison made a few months after Nyad’s crossing, it seems that the promised documentation is not forthcoming. If Morrison and Nyad released something now, over two years after the fact and twelve years after the crossing, could we believe it?

Update, March 8, 2026: Still waiting.