Diana Nyad Fact Check Annex

Diana’s Op-Ed Goes Live

The New York Times Opinion section’s Facebook Live event with Diana Nyad on Friday left plenty to talk about. I’d expect nothing less from a storyteller of Nyad’s caliber.

Update, 29 June 2019: Last August, the NY Times quietly issued a “correction” to a critical paragraph of the op-ed. Nyad’s detailed description of the time, date, and location of the first episode of alleged abuse (see previous post) now reads, “That summer, on the day of a swim meet, I went over to Coach’s house for a nap.”

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Diana Nyad’s conversation with Alicia Wittmeyer of the New York Times is the most disturbing thing I’ve heard from her. That’s saying a lot given the quantity of Nyad material that I’ve listened to in the last few years. The smugness, the fluidity of truth, the Trumpian rhetoric—it’s all there. But now she’s using her own alleged abuse to latch on to others’ horror to satisfy her own needs.

Nyad’s stories often shift from telling to telling. This time was no different. Continue reading “Diana’s Op-Ed Goes Live”

Addressing Diana’s Op-ed

Nyad’s recent piece in The New York Times contains multiple inaccuracies that cast a shadow over the validity of her allegations.

Update, 7 Sep 2019: Integrated new evidence from “New Evidence….” Edited post for readability.

Update, 29 June 2019: Last August, the NY Times quietly issued a “correction” to a critical paragraph of Nyad’s piece. The time and location of the initial episode of alleged abuse, originally the state championships at her school (Pine Crest), became just “a swim meet.” The Times left all of Nyad’s other fabrications intact.

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All quotes come from Nyad’s article unless otherwise noted.

1. 1964 — Location of the Meet

"That summer, our school hosted the state championships. It was a big deal, and I was a star in the middle of it all. In between the afternoon preliminaries and the night finals, bursting with confidence, I went over to Coach’s house for a nap." (Archived at Internet Wayback Machine and at Later On.)

Nyad’s school, Pine Crest, did not hold the state championships that summer, so Nyad could not have napped at her coach’s house. Pine Crest was in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. In 1964, the state meet took place in Gainesville, over 300 miles away.
Pine Crest could not have hosted a state meet or a championship of any kind in 1964. The school had only a four-lane 20-yard pool and no diving well.

Continue reading “Addressing Diana’s Op-ed”

Diana’s GREAT Surprise, part 3: Nyad Abdicates The Throne . . . For Now

The final entry examining Diana Nyad’s bizarre response to being caught in her Manhattan lie.

part 1 | part 2

Chicago Tribune front page, August 7, 1926, the day after Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim the English Channel.

Nyad Invokes Ederle and All is Lost

After being recognized as the first woman to swim around Manhattan in both highly regarded press and swimming circles...

Diana, we’ve been through this already. It never happened.

Continue reading “Diana’s GREAT Surprise, part 3: Nyad Abdicates The Throne . . . For Now”

Diana’s GREAT Surprise, part 2: More Of Nyad’s Manhattan Effluent

The second of three entries examining Diana Nyad’s bizarre response to getting caught in her Manhattan lie.

part 1

Billions of Gallons of Sewage Can’t Be Wrong

I was in graduate school for Comparative Literature at NYU in 1975 and when I came back to school in the fall, after a summer on the world marathon swimming circuit, such as the annual swim across the Bay of Naples, from Capri to Naples, Italy...

Nyad may or may not have gone to NYU,* but she did swim the Capri-Naples race in the summer of ’75. It would be her last time: she finished fourth of seven women, 14th overall—not the best evidence for her “greatest long-distance swimmer in the world” claim (see “The Best of the ’70s”).

*Update: Nyad enrolled at NYU in 1973 and left at the end of the school year.

Continue reading “Diana’s GREAT Surprise, part 2: More Of Nyad’s Manhattan Effluent”

Diana’s GREAT Surprise, part 1

The first of three entries examining Diana Nyad’s bizarre response to being caught in her Manhattan lie.

In 2011, CNN caught Diana Nyad lying about being the first woman to swim around Manhattan Island. In response, Nyad did not apologize for — nor even acknowledge — her deception. Instead, she posted a blog entry full of excuses, justifications, irrelevant information, and more lies.
Continue reading “Diana’s GREAT Surprise, part 1”

The Manhattan Project, part 2: Diana Nyad’s Titanium Cap of Will

Nyad’s “Fearless!” performance contained much of her usual crowd-pleasing poppycock, but she hit the mother lode with her original take on protective headgear.

Tom Terrific and his non-titanium thinking cap.

As per my previous post, Diana Nyad appeared on the New Yorker Festival’s Fearless!: Life on the Edge panel on Saturday, October 7. Except for her religious conversion (see below), I heard nothing new…with one important exception: Ms. Nyad’s “Titanium Cap of Will.”

All quotes below come from Nyad at Fearless!.
Continue reading “The Manhattan Project, part 2: Diana Nyad’s Titanium Cap of Will”

The Manhattan Project, part 1: Diana Nyad At The New Yorker Festival

Diana Nyad’s transparent and greedy Manhattan lie — “I was the first woman to swim around Manhattan Island” — gives us the key to understanding all of her deceptions.

Many tiny, fearless fish swimming around a large jellyfish. — Fearless fish and jelly. Photo by Richard Wonka via Shutterstock

Diana Nyad returned to Manhattan on Saturday for the New Yorker Festival’s Fearless!: Life on the Edge. The panel — arranged by a highly respected magazine, occurring on the island of Nyad’s most obvious lie, and consisting of three genuine adventurers and one fraud — provided an indicator of the success of Nyad’s deceit. On stage, she told untruths she had parroted in other venues, giving no hint she’d been deceiving people for decades. Few in the audience knew they had the honor of listening to one of sports’ greatest liars.
Continue reading “The Manhattan Project, part 1: Diana Nyad At The New Yorker Festival”

The Great Swim

A great read about the race to become the first woman to swim the English Channel, THE GREAT SWIM costars Mille Gade, 2nd to swim the channel (and to circle Manhattan). And then there are the touching bits.

The English Channel is the closest thing we have to a Mt. Everest of marathon swims, no matter what Diana Nyad says. I recently finished The Great Swim, a book about the summer of 1926, when four American women went to Europe, all wanting to become the first female to conquer their Everest. It’s a fascinating story well-told. The author, Gavin Mortimer, also writes of the aftermath — how being first nearly destroyed the life of the young and unworldly Gertrude Ederle.

Continue reading “The Great Swim”

Why Does Diana Make Stuff Up?

Diana Nyad wants fortune, fame, and adoration. To ensure acquisition thereof, she exaggerates and lies.

Early in her career, Nyad was more candid than she is now about her career goals. From a 1975 interview:

I would not deny that the day to day motivations are fame and fortune…. I want very much to be recognized.

Continue reading “Why Does Diana Make Stuff Up?”

Everybody’s Doin’ It

Diana Nyad says that everyone who’s anyone has tried to swim the Florida Strait. I count six.

From the Brink of Midnight podcast, #9:

All the great swimmers of the ocean have tried [to swim from Cuba to Florida]—male, female, young, strong, fast. [28:05]

Complete nonsense.

Five people who are not Diana Nyad have attempted to swim from Cuba to Florida:

Continue reading “Everybody’s Doin’ It”