Diana Nyad Fact Check Annex

(Update 19 Mar 2025: Kenshoo overhauled their website after I published this. Most or all of the original pages have disappeared. Kenshoo also removed its video of Nyad’s presentation from YouTube. I have pointed the Kenshoo links to archived pages and clips.)

A Sport Beyond

1968 was not a good year for Diana Nyad.

Her beloved high school coach, Jack Nelson, had promised her (or so she thought) that her zeal would win her an Olympic medal.  With the Mexico City games on the horizon, Nyad scrambled to make the trials. But no matter how hard she swam, she couldn’t swim fast enough to qualify. And so ended the first of her aquatic dreams.
Continue reading “Diana Nyad, The Only One Who Knows”

On December 23, Steven Munatones published “Slosberg The Shrewd Sleuth” at Openwaterswimming.com. Most of the article consists of text that Munatones recycled from “Shameful, Simply And Sadly Shameful,” an earlier post about the Openwaterpedia vandalism. After the “Shameful…” parts, he adds a final paragraph about the nominal subject (me) and how I…

set about to identify and helped stop this hacking. [Slosberg] was extremely helpful and brilliant in his approach. He was able to resolve issues on tens of thousands pages. His sleuthing was incredible and greatly appreciated.

I’m grateful for praise as long as it’s for a genuine accomplishment. But a pat on the back for something I didn’t do feels creepy and manipulative.
Continue reading “A Response to “Slosberg The Shrewd Sleuth””

I became, in the 1970s, the best ocean swimmer in the world. I held every major record on planet earth, out in the open sea.
—Diana Nyad, 7 Oct 2019

While compiling a list of the real best ocean swimmers of the decade, I headed over to Openwaterpedia — “the Wikipedia for the open water swimming world” — looking for more data about listees. I began with Lynne Cox and Tina Bischoff. Cox set English Channel records in 1972 and ’73, Bischoff in ’76. But something was off with their Openwaterpedia entries: they showed Cox and Bischoff swimming the English Channel in the sixties. As a matter of fact, their entries showed neither of them completing a single swim in the 1970s.
Continue reading “How a Hacker Made Diana Nyad the Best Marathon Swimmer of the 1970s”

Diana Nyad’s fraud flourishes in part because of the inaccessibility of marathon swimming data. Information about her five years on the pro swimming tour has been particularly hard to find. To try to remedy that, last summer I began working with Malaika Desrameaux, a freelance researcher from South Florida.  Malaika combed through the archives of the International Swimming Hall of Fame, finding more and better material than I could have ever imagined. It was she who unearthed the World Professional Marathon Swimming (WPMSF) bulletins that made it possible to gather much of Nyad’s race information.
Continue reading “Treasures From the ISHOF Archives and Beyond”

At Bold Missy, they name their brews for inspiring women. Right now, they’ll pour you beers that honor astronaut Sally Ride, sharpshooter Annie Oakley, aviator Amelia Earhart, and mountaineer/explorer Alison Levine.

And they recently added a new one for Diana Nyad:

Later on, I’ll suggest a few alternatives to Find a Way Wheat. First, though, I want to point out some highs and lows from Nyad’s recent appearance with Levine at Bold Missy. The highs all came, by the way, via Levine, whose integrity and authenticity provided an uplifting counterpoint to Nyad’s narcissism and deceit.
Continue reading “Diana Nyad Spills at Bold Missy Brewery”

While most of the world reveled in Lance Armstrong’s miraculous return to cycling, Walsh asked himself, “How could it be that a man is transformed into a super champion by a two-year illness?”

We could ask a similar question of Diana: How could it be that a woman is transformed into a super champion by aging more than three decades?

In fact, change the name and a few details, and Walsh’s Armstrong story is Nyad’s. Below are a few more examples from “Extraordinary Proof.”
Continue reading “Extraordinary Proof: David Walsh, Lance, and Diana”

Warning: This post contains profanity—mostly “bullshit,” because Diana Nyad utters mainly that.

¡Cuba Siempre! 

After claiming to have been “the best ocean swimmer in the world” (see previous post), Nyad takes a step back to admire her grandeur and finds it wanting:

I held all the major records on planet Earth, uh, out in the open sea. But for me, all those were in one category—the Bay of Naples, the swims along the Argentine coast—all respectable, tough swims. But it was always about Cuba for me.

Continue reading “Nyad at the Ebell, part 2: It was Always Cuba, The Bartlett Pair, and Other Myths”

On Monday, October 7, 2019, Diana Nyad spoke at the Ebell Club of Los Angeles for its 125th Anniversary Opening Day Lunch. “Come and meet this extraordinary woman,” reads the online invitation,

…and hear her story. On the 125th Anniversary of the Ebell, the courage, determination and resilience of Diana Nyad are an inspiration to us all. (Ebell of L.A.)

My son Noah and I attended. Afterward, I began writing up the event. Only after finishing did I realize what I’d really been writing about, so I added the following preamble.

PREAMBLE

The crux of Nyad’s presentation — as it is with much of her writing and public speaking — was her attempt to erase from history many of the great women swimmers of the past.
Continue reading “Nyad at the Ebell, part 1: The Best on Planet Earth”

Just before her first Cuba-Florida attempt, Diana Nyad and her PR firm, the Kalmus Corporation, sent out a press release to lure sponsors.

Nyad wanted potential backers to believe that she was one of the greatest marathon swimmers on the planet, so she and her PR crew had to get creative.
Continue reading “Anatomy of a 1978 Nyad Press Release”

Notification of the swim’s ratification arrived in the form of a late-night edit ^[1]  to part of Diana Nyad’s Openwaterpedia entry. Before the edit, it read:

Most of the questions raised by experienced marathon swimmers worldwide remain unanswered. As of 2019, the swim has not been ratified or authenticated by any official swimming governing body.

Continue reading “Ratification Infestation: Notes on WOWSA’s Retroactive Recognition of Diana Nyad’s Cuba-Florida Crossing”