Evan Morrison’s Decade Of Doubt

In his August 2023 “On NYAD: An Open letter to the marathon swimming community,” Evan Morrison said that his “general view” of Nyad’s Cuba-Florida crossing hadn’t changed in a decade:

Incidentally, here’s what I wrote after the conference call of September 10, 2013, in which Diana and her team answered questions from a panel of marathon swimmers and administrators (including myself):

While many questions about Diana’s swim remain to be addressed, I have not yet seen any evidence to suggest that Diana did not do as she is claiming — swim from Cuba to Florida. However, because of the repeated physical contact with her crew in putting on her stinger suit, I consider it an ‘assisted’ swim – the third after Walter Poenisch and Susie Maroney.

Some may find this surprising, but my general view has not changed from 10 years ago — except now, with far more documentation, far fewer questions “remain to be addressed.”

He was right; he spent the 10 years after Nyad’s 2013 crossing questioning her claims and supporting other skeptics. That he would argue the opposite transcends hypocrisy — “surprising” doesn’t come close. It’s as if Greta Thunberg began saying that climate change was a hoax, Jane Goodall turned out to hate chimps, or Kermit the Frog joined the Proud Boys.

Morrison’s “While many questions . . .” quote currently exists solely in his open letter and a Santa Barbara Channel Swimming Association (SBCSA) article, “Diana Nyad’s Epic Swim.” That article has since disappeared from the SBCSA site. You can find an archived version here.

The broken link in “Incidentally, here’s what I wrote . . .” originally accessed “Diana Nyad’s Epic Swim.” Morrison oversaw the site at the time, so he’s responsible for the article’s disappearance. He’s also responsible for prohibiting the SBCSA site from being archived at archive.org. Anyone who wants to save SBCSA pages must save them manually. But we know Morrison wrote “While many questions about Diana’s swim remain to be addressed . . .” sometime after the conference call and before October 4, 2013, the day the SBCSA posted “its article “Diana Nyad’s Epic Swim.”

From October 4, 2013, through the summer of 2023, Evan doubted the legitimacy of Nyad’s crossing. I suspect he still does. But in July 2023, something or someone made it worthwhile for him to start saying he didn’t. They made it worthwhile enough that he betrayed his friends, his sport, and his principles.

His ostensible change of mind wasn’t the problem, though. The problem came afterward, when he began harassing anyone who questioned his conversion. Some examples of Morrison’s responses to other marathon swimmers:

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For the ten years before he began bullying and harassing skeptics, Morrison lived contentedly among them. “Happy to give Diana all due credit and acclaim,” Morrison wrote on September 2, 2013, “as soon as I know what I’m giving credit for” (archived). The MSF’s Marathon Swimmers Forum became the center of Nyad skepticism worldwide, with Morrison one of Nyad’s most vocal and eloquent critics.

4 Oct 2013
“Enormous Iceberg of Doubt.”
The same day the SBCSA posts “Diana Nyad’s Epic Swim,” Morrison posts a comment to the Marathon Swimmers Forum thread dedicated to Nyad’s crossing:

Over the past few days I’ve been trying to organize my own thoughts on this debacle, and this is what I keep coming back to. Among the most experienced, knowledgeable, wise marathon swimmers in the world, trust that this swim is what it claims to be is… close to zero.

The tiny details that non-marathon swimmers would never notice, but that raise giant red flags among people who’ve actually been there, in the trenches of a challenging channel swim.

In the absence of hard evidence, there’s a very fine line between intuition-based skepticism, and slanderous conspiracy theories. As thorough and critical as this thread has been, it’s merely the public-facing tip of an enormous iceberg of doubt.

Dec 2013
“Nyad utterly lacks credibility.”
He deleted his October 4 comment before I could get a screenshot. But I grabbed this one in time:

Morrison was right about Nyad’s credibility. But there was plenty more to talk about, and he did a lot of the talking.

Feb 2014
A New Yorker Nyad profile prompts Morrison to cancel his subscription.
The New Yorker publishes Ariel Levy’s Nyad profile, “Breaking the Waves” (archived). Morrison calls the profile an atrocity “committed against the journalism profession.” Levy accepted every one of Nyad’s many lies. Morrison writes that Levy’s “DN puff piece led me to unsubscribe for 2 years from the New Yorker, which is saying something since I’d been a subscriber for about half my life” (archived).

26 Aug 2016
Nyad reiterates her Manhattan lie on Facebook. Morrison responds.
“Before Cuba, way back in 1975,” she writes, “the swim that made my heart race was Manhattan. I was the first woman to circle the island.” Morrison replies several times. First, he reminds Nyad that she wasn’t the first woman. Later, after a respondent complains about “the arguing and negativity,” Morrison replies:

[Cue snark] Or until he decides for everyone that it’s time to move on.

30 Aug 2016
Morrison starts an MSF Forum thread about Nyad’s Manhattan Facebook post.
Morrison’s opening post praises the Internet Wayback Machine, a.k.a. archive.org, for helping document Nyad’s lies:

The hilarious thing is . . . she had already been confronted about this false claim, about 5 years ago. The blog post from 2011 where she acknowledges this is deleted from her site, but thanks to the Wayback Machine we can still read it: https://web.archive.org/web/20110615012544/http:/diananyad.com/history-rewritten%E2%80%A6-to-my-great-surprise.

Hypocrisy alert: Morrison prohibits the Wayback Machine from archiving MSF pages. He did the same thing at the SBCSA. This helps him avoid the unearthing of his duplicity. To make matters worse, his redesign of the Marathon Swimmers Forum last year broke every link to the previous version’s pages. Morrison minimized the usefulness of this once-great library of marathon-swimming knowledge. He shut down the Forum last year, leaving in its place a clunky archive.

In a Facebook discussion about Morrison’s MSF post — yes, a Facebook post about an MSF post about a Facebook post — someone mentions Nyad’s Cuba-Florida crossing, prompting Morrison to comment on Nyad’s crew:

Jan 2017: Diana Nyad Fact Check website goes online

May 2017
“Patiently, calmly, rationally” — Morrison praises the site.
At the beginning of 2017, I upload the Nyad Fact Check site and post about it on the Marathon Swimmers Forum. All the replies are supportive, including Morrison’s. During the discussion, he responds to an allegation that Nyad may have invented sponsorships for her non-profit, EverWalk:

There’s a fine art to minority influence (i.e. changing widespread yet false beliefs), and it’s incredibly easy to come of as a shrill, paranoid crank – at which point everyone just tunes you out.

The idea that Everwalk is fabricating major sponsors . . . is arguably in that territory. It just doesn’t help.

Observe what @danslos has done – and continues to do. Offer facts and evidence when the opportunity presents itself – patiently, calmly, rationally. This is the model. (via redesigned site|archived)

Jun 2017
Morrison says the post-swim conference call was “a sham performance . . . to get the pesky skeptics off her back.”

I was on that [conference] call, and I don’t recall ever seeing any navigational charts or real-time observations on currents, though we specifically asked for it. That was the crux of the issue at the time — they promised to provide it, so in the immediate aftermath of the call, many took her at her word, like “OK cool, so it is forthcoming.” But then the charts & stuff never came, and we began to realize that it was basically just a sham performance for the collected international media to get the pesky skeptics off her back.

Lesson Learned. (MSF/archive)

Not well enough.

7 Sep 2017
The Marathon Swimmers Federation makes its Diana Nyad Fact Check website support official.
MSF co-founder Donal Buckley announces that “The MSF team would like to demonstrate our support and belief in the importance of @danslos’ site to the sport . . . by crowdfunding ten years’ registration costs of the domain.” Evan Morrison (@evmo) is a charter contributor.
Current/archived

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25 Sep 2017: Diana Nyad Fact Check Annex goes online

Morrison and the Marathon Swimmers Federation used to host blogs by marathon swimmers. Nyad can’t stop lying, so I need somewhere to catalog her new material. Morrison agrees to host a Nyad Fact Check blog.

25 Sep 2017
I upload the first post, “Everybody’s Doin’ It.”
It addresses Nyad’s frequent claim that “All the great swimmers of the ocean have tried [to swim from Cuba to Florida] — male, female, young, strong, fast.” Including Nyad, six have tried.

Dec 2017
Morrison: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
On the Marathon Swimmers Forum, Morrison showers Sarah Thomas with deserved praise:

Her swimming feats are already etched in the permanent history of the sport, but what I’ve appreciated even more is her commitment to the unstated ethics of traditional / no BS old-school open water swimming: suit/cap/goggles, full transparency… extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. (Current version | archived)

(C.f. Lance Armstrong: “Extraordinary accusations must be followed up by extraordinary proof.”)

Feb 2019
“Disqualified”
I publish “Disqualified,” a blog entry that shows how the rules Nyad claimed to follow should have led to her disqualification. In a Facebook discussion (archived) of the entry, I post a link to Mary Gordon’s gorgeously written savaging of Nyad’s 1978 memoir, Other Shores. Evan comments:

He also comments on her claim that she locked her borrowed GPS trackers “in a bank vault, to ensure that the history [of her Cuba–Florida crossing] will survive” (Find a Way, p. 278):

May 2019
Evan writes about Diana Nyad and Steven Munatones’ “Depths of obfuscatory BS.”
On May 3, 2019, I post “Attachment Disorder 3: Well-Connected.” In it, I speculate that Diana Nyad could have cheated by using high-test fishing line. The strongest line can drag hundreds of pounds while remaining nearly invisible. In a discussion of the post, Evan thanks me for finding a thread about Nyad’s 2012 Cuba-Florida attempt. Then he writes about what that discussion taught us about Diana Nyad and her most prominent enabler (at the time), Steven Munatones:

But in retrospect 2012 was a tipping point, when many realized the depths of obfuscatory BS that DN and her chief promoter [Munatones] were capable of. Recall at the time this person was running IMSHOF! It must have been very annoying for these insignificant internet forum posters to be asking uncomfortable questions. (archived)

July 13, 2019 – Morrison disparages a swimmer for supporting Diana Nyad.
In a Facebook thread about Nyad’s killer jellyfish, Morrison disparages Stuart McDougal for supporting Nyad (and liking tow floats):

Even after Morrison begins defending Nyad, he continues badgering McDougal.

21 Aug 2022
The World Open Water Swimming Association (WOWSA) publishes its “Diana Nyad Cuba–Florida 2013 Swim Report.”
The report provides an extraordinary amount of evidence. But it doesn’t move us any closer to demonstrating the veracity of Nyad’s claims than we were in September 2013.

26 Jul 2023
Morrison posts the first public evidence that he has compromised himself.
In a Marathon Swimmers Federation Facebook discussion, he excoriates WOWSA’s former developer and says that Munatones did not hack Openwaterpedia.

For Morrison's comments and actions between August 21, 2022, and his miraculous conversion on or about July 23, 2023, see "Evan Agonistes: The Anatomy Of A Betrayal."

31 Aug 2023
Morrison publishes “On NYAD: An open letter to the marathon swimming community.”
In a condescending and duplicitous manifesto, Morrison comes out as a Nyad shill and decides for the entire community that it’s “time to move on.” After ten years of Nyad skepticism, it takes him less than a week to go from Nyad heretic to hatchet man.

Before “On NYAD,” there was only one big question about Nyad’s deceit. Now, there are three:

1. How did Diana cheat?
2. Who convinced Evan to betray his sport?
3. What did he get for his betrayal?