{"id":3499,"date":"2024-01-23T17:51:51","date_gmt":"2024-01-23T17:51:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nyadfactcheck.com\/annex\/?p=3499"},"modified":"2026-06-24T03:49:57","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T03:49:57","slug":"diana-nyad-didnt-complete-a-legitimate-crossing-heres-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nyadfactcheck.com\/annex\/diana-nyad-didnt-complete-a-legitimate-crossing-heres-why\/","title":{"rendered":"Diana Nyad Could Not Have Completed A Legitimate Crossing From Cuba To Florida, And Here’s Why"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On a sweltering summer day in 1995, renowned close-up magician Ricky Jay<\/a> sat opposite British journalist Suzie Makenzie in a Los Angeles restaurant. While they waited to order, Jay began telling a story about one of his mentors, Max Malini, in which Malini lifted his hat off a table to reveal a large chunk of ice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jay had been holding his menu upright in front of him. As he finished the story, he raised the menu off the table to reveal \u2014 yes, you guessed it \u2014 an enormous block of ice. The ice hadn’t melted at all, so it couldn’t have been there for more than a few seconds. Mackenzie tried to lift it off the table to check if it was real. When she realized it was, she burst into tears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Jay performed what appeared to be a miracle with Mackenzie the sole witness. She would later say her predominant feeling at that moment wasn’t astonishment but love. Yet, she knew that Jay did not<\/em> perform a miracle, nor did he ever claim to. (Mackenzie describe the illusion at 1:29 in this video<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Diana Nyad, who has lied continuously for over half a century, wants us to believe that she performed not one but two miracles: First, that she completed a legitimate but unprovable crossing from Cuba to Florida; second, that to complete her crossing, she stopped lying for three days in the middle of a 50-year fabrication spree. Diana wants us to believe she produced a block of ice out of thin air.<\/a> After all, no one can prove she didn’t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How The WOWSA Report Shows Diana Nyad Could Not Have Completed The Crossing Under Her Own Power<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In an open letter<\/a> posted to the Marathon Swimmers Federation (MSF) website, Evan Morrison, MSF co-founder and former Nyad skeptic, argued that we must separate our personal feelings about Nyad from the verifiable details of her crossing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A swim is a set of facts, detailing an athletic feat. We must evaluate it as such, regardless of how we feel about Diana the person.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Beginning in July 2022, WOWSA set out to uncover and analyze as many of those facts as possible. The organization had recently concluded an investigation into Nejib Belhedi’s alleged crossing from Italy to Tunisia<\/a>. Despite credible allegations that he cheated, he insisted that WOWSA would ratify his feat. <\/p>\n\n\n

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The organization learned, among other things, that Belhedi had spent 10 hours in the middle of the crossing on his guide boat. They also found unconvincing his claim to have slept for hours while swimming face down in the water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though WOWSA has never legitimately ratified, recognized, sanctioned, or approved Nyad’s crossing, Nyad has claimed it did. (I use ratified, recognized, sanctioned, and approved interchangeably. Steven Munatones, Nyad’s right-hand man and a former WOWSA board member, once surreptitiously changed her Openwaterpedia entry<\/a> to read that WOWSA had ratified the crossing. However, her entry now reads that “Nyad’s Cuba-Florida crossing was never ratified.”)<\/p>\n\n\n

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In September 2022, WOWSA released a comprehensive report on Nyad’s crossing. It included an extraordinary amount of new or previously unavailable data: the original, handwritten observer logs; hundreds of images; interviews with Nyad, Munatones, and crew members; and much more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite all that, Nyad was no closer to proving she completed a legitimate crossing. The newly available documentation does not<\/em> prove, as Morrison has suggested it does, that Nyad completed the crossing under her own power. Instead, it provides substantial evidence that Nyad could not have swum from Cuba to Florida without help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We need to start with the two people Nyad charged with ensuring the crossing’s legitimacy. Paradoxically, she spent far less time recruiting them than anyone else on her crew. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nyad’s “Independent Observers”<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

If I planned to play fast and loose with every rule in the marathon swimming rulebook, I’d want observers like Janet Hinkle and Roger McVeigh: Respectable, well-meaning admirers who know almost nothing about the sport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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You have independent observers from the world of marathon swimming on the boat to make sure you never put on fins, you don’t wear a wetsuit, you’re not touching anything to support yourself.*<\/p>\nAmerican Osteopathic Association<\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

*Nyad often reframes the rules this way, boiling them down to three or four guidelines so obvious they go without saying. She gives her versions of the rules various legitimate-sounding titles, like “the basic tenets of fair swims”<\/a> or “the fair, just, ethical and agreed-upon rules of our sport<\/a>.” Meanwhile, she ignores the actual rules of marathon swimming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hinkle and McVeigh did not<\/em> come from “the world of marathon swimming.” They were two acquaintances and fans of Nyad whom she contacted the morning her flotilla left for Cuba. They had no experience or training beyond “a brief note from Steve Munatones giving us some tips on observation<\/a>.” The pair knew nothing about solo marathon swimming besides what they’d gleaned from Diana Nyad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hinkle and McVeigh were not independent, nor did they function as legitimate observers. Nyad used them as props. She brought them along so she could point at them and say, “Look, I had independent observers.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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