Diana Nyad Fact Check Annex

In 1976, Diana Nyad coached the Barnard College swim team. That year, Barnard student Jean Anne Kiewel interviewed Diana for the Barnard Bulletin. According to Kiewel, Nyad said that she “started swimming in California and moved to Florida when her coach did.” (“Barnard’s Water Nymph: the Nyad Mystique,” 2 Feb 1976)

Following her coach from one coast to another would mean that swimming was so important to her, and that she was so good at it, that her family uprooted itself and traveled across a continent to support her endeavors.
Continue reading ““New Evidence…” Addendum: The Barnard Bulletin”

Just over a year ago, the New York Times issued a correction to an op-ed in which Diana Nyad accuses her high school swim coach, Jack Nelson, of sexual abuse. The correction reads:

An earlier version of this article incorrectly described an event associated with the initial assault on the author. It was a swim meet, not the state swimming championships.

The change gave the illusion that The Times had cleaned up Nyad’s mess. “We published a thorough correction,” editor Alicia Wittmeyer told journalist Irv Muchnick, “and don’t plan to comment beyond it.”

But the correction was far from thorough, leaving most of Nyad’s fabrications intact.
Continue reading “New Evidence that Diana Nyad Fabricated Her Abuse Story”

Last week, Irv Muchnick posted an article about the muffled change that the New York Times made to Diana Nyad’s op-ed, “My Life After Sexual Assault” (original here). Notice of the change apparently appeared nowhere but at the bottom of the on-line article. That notice reads:

Correction: Aug. 10, 2018
An earlier version of this article incorrectly described an event associated with the initial assault on the author. It was a swim meet, not the state swimming championships.

Continue reading “The New York Times’ Diana Nyad Problem”

One of Diana Nyad’s favorite stories involves a debilitating illness—viral endocarditis—that kept her from qualifying for the 1968 Olympic trials. In her tale, she was practically a shoo-in to land a place on the U.S. squad, but fate and infection intervened:

In 1968 observers thought that Nyad was certain to make the Olympic team. “I was considered a ‘sure thing.’ The media considered it a tragic case when I didn’t make it. An attack of heart disease in the summer of 1967 slowed me down. I just wasn’t swimming fast enough to make the team. I was so disappointed, I stopped swimming. I went to India to meditate and do my drop-out thing for awhile. (Barnard Bulletin, 2 Feb 1976; complete issue here)

Actually, she got sick in the summer of 1966, but who’s counting?

Obviously, not Diana Nyad.
Continue reading “Diana’s Kaleidoscopic Convalescence”

Up until a few weeks ago, 2007 was the earliest I’d found Diana Nyad claiming to be the first woman to swim around Manhattan (see The Score, 21 June 2007). I assumed, then, that Nyad waited for her six predecessors to pass away before leapfrogging to the front. The last-living of those six swimmers, Diane Struble, died in 2006.
Continue reading “Dept. of Corrections: I missed Diana’s Manhattan claim by at least 26 years”

part 1 – part 2 – part 3

Bonnie grabbed my shoulders….
She looked in my eyes, and she said, “Let’s find a way.”
And I took the leap. And we found our way.
 – Diana Nyad, Generation Bold, 18 Nov 2018, 4:51

To guarantee the success of her Cuba-Florida swim, Diana Nyad needed to construct a system that, ideally, would:

• • 1. Overcome unfavorable currents at any time of the day or night.
    2. Be easy to deploy and remove.
    3. Be invisible—not only to outsiders (the press, curious boaters, etc.) but also to members of her team, most of whom would not be in on the plan.

Whatever method she settled on, she didn’t use it in previous attempts. She probably had not envisioned it yet, still dreaming that she could make the swim under her own power.

In the year leading up to the 2013 attempt, Nyad’s guide boat, Voyager, accompanied her during long practice swims. Again, whatever method she decided on, she had plenty of time during those swims to develop and test her system.

Continue reading “Attachment Disorder 3: Well-Connected”

part 1 – part 2 – part 3

Carpe Funem (“Seize the Rope”)

In her first memoir, Other Shores, Diana Nyad lists the rules of a 1975 race in Argentina:

The swimmer must wear only regulation suit, cap, goggles and grease. The swimmer must swim to the side of his boat, not behind it. (Greta Andersen was once passed in a race in the Nile by an Egyptian with a wide grin on his face; he had a tight grip on a rope tied to the back of his boat, and was eating a banana.) The swimmer may not at any time touch the boat, the shore or another person. (p. 35)

The boom Nyad used for her directional streamer gave her an artificial stern. Swimming behind it allowed her to break the rule without breaking the rule, no banana required.

Continue reading “Attachment Disorder, part 2: Everything’s All Right”

Last November, Nyad spoke with Adriane Berg of “Generation Bold.”

As you might expect, Nyad peddled many of her usual lies and exaggerations. But she added a few new ones.

First, a creel of oldies:
Continue reading “International Fact-Checking Day Celebration”

part 1 – part 2 – part 3

In Medias Res

Starting with the rules laid down in my house when I was a child, I have never much respected society’s expected standards. . . . When some television executive tells me the story I’m working on has to have a linear structure and start at the beginning, I revolt and take my case to the highest command, arguing that to embark on this particular story in the middle and work the early part in later hits the sublime emotion of it. Ask Shakespeare about in medias res.
—Diana Nyad, Find a Way, p. 222

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Diana Nyad is well into the second night of her fifth and final attempt to swim from Cuba to Florida. She has made miraculous progress over the last two days, often moving at speeds more than double and sometimes triple her usual 1.5-2 miles per hour. At 9 p.m. on Sunday night, she’s chugging along at about three miles per hour — with the ostensible help of a strong current flowing northeast.
Continue reading “Attachment Disorder, part 1”