Diana Nyad frequently denigrates and dishonors other women athletes. She ignores them, demeans them, and steals their accomplishments.

 

Diana Nyad at her press conference in Key West on September 3, 2013, the day after she crossed from Cuba to Florida. From “Swimmer Diana Nyad’s success story inspires aging boomers” via the Spokesman-Review of Spokane, Washington (AP Photo/J Pat Carter).

Diana Nyad takes neither joy nor pride in honoring anyone but Diana Nyad. Her lust for admiration steals attention from many swimmers who genuinely deserve acclaim. On the rare occasions she mentions other female swimmers, she usually uses them as fuel for the fire of her own glorification.

Nyad employs at least three strategies for aggrandizing herself at the expense of other female athletes. Below are examples from each of her three methods:

 

#1: Steal Achievements, Ignore Achievers

 

When Nyad lies about qualifying for the 1968 Women’s Olympic Trials, she dishonors all of the actual qualifiers. Among the women Nyad ignores:

• Kaye Hall, who won the 100 back at the trials and went on to set a world record in Mexico City.
• Jane Swaggerty, who took second at the trials and bronze at the Olympics.
• The five women who set nine world records at the 1968 trials: Hall, Pokey Watson (200 back), Catie Ball (100 and 200 breast), Claudia Kolb (200 and 400 IM), and Debbie Meyer (200, 400, and 800 free).

 

The U.S. women swimmers went on to dominate the Mexico City Olympics. They won 11 out of 14 events and 26 of 42 medals. Nyad never mentions the name of anyone on that team.

Nor, of course, does she ever name the swimmer who really placed 6th in the 100 back at the trials: Laura Novak, the 14-year-old from Dearborn, Michigan, who held her own against some of the greatest athletes in the world.

Please see “The 1968 Olympic Trials” for details.

Four years later: A trio of Dearborn High School students qualified for the 1972 Olympic Trials. Laura Novak earned spots in three events: the 100 back, 200 back, and 100 butterfly. Tom Szuba qualified in the 200 back and the 400 IM, Paul Foster in both the 100 and 200 back. Of the three swimmers, only Szuba reached the finals, finishing 6th in the 400 IM. The ’72 trials would be the last meet of Laura Novak’s swimming career.

 

 

Manhattan

Diana Nyad knows that six women swam around Manhattan Island before she did. She could use her prominence to help bring those six women the respect and acclaim they deserve. Instead, she tries to erase them from history:

Please see the “Manhattan” page for details.

Three women entered the 1930 race around Manhattan: from left to right, Anne Priller Benoit, Emmi Busse, and Lillian Garrick. Of the three, only Benoit finished. Garrick completed the swim in 1929. (Screenshot from “Clips from 1930 race around Manhattan Island.”)

 

 

Best of the ’70s

 

Diana Nyad never came close to being the best ocean swimmer of the 1970s. At least twelve great marathon swimmers did, and five of them are women. (Please see “Best of the Seventies” for details.)

Besides the top twelve, at least fifteen other seventies swimmers were far better than Nyad. Four were women: American Tina Bischoff, Egypt’s Nazla Faidalla, Canada’s Loreen Passfield, and Joke van Staveren of the Netherlands.

• Bischoff: In 1976, the year Nyad failed in her three English Channel attempts, Bischoff broke the overall Channel record by thirty minutes (see article below).
• Faidalla: Completed the Channel that same summer, then swam it again in 1978.
• Passfield: Swam the Channel in 1978. Won the World Professional Marathon Swimming Federation championship in 1977 and 1978.
• Von Staveren: Swam the Channel in 1977 and 1979. Had a successful pro swimming career into the 1980s.

 

Nyad ignores all of these women, minimizing their accomplishments and stealing the recognition they deserve.

 

American Tina Bischoff after her record-breaking 1976 English Channel swim (Los Angeles Times, 6 August 1976).

 

Diana Nyad never came close to winning a U.S. national championship nor setting a world record.

When Nyad was 16, four teenagers from three countries held all the backstroke world records and U.S. national titles: Judy Humbarger of the United States, Elaine Tanner of Canada, and Karen Muir and Ann Fairlie, both of South Africa. Diana Nyad never mentions their names.

For details, please see “A National Title & A World Record.”

 

#2: Claim Achievement, Underrate and/or Denigrate Achievers

 

Penny Palfrey & Chloë McCardel

The accomplishments of Palfrey and McCardel dwarf Nyad’s. So she feigns respect while doing whatever she can to debase them. “You know, the two greatest distance swimmers on the planet today, along with me,” she declared in a 2017 interview, “are two Australian women. . . . I bow down in front of the two of them.” (Neuronfire podcast, 6:05).

Then Nyad brings up their Cuba-Florida attempts:

 

You know, like Diana did. She neglects to mention her no return policy on the English Channel. Never to denigrate, of course.

Nyad also leaves out the part about Penny Palfrey completing four of the five major swims on planet earth—swims Nyad wouldn’t dare attempt after her Dover Strait debacles. Palfrey completed the Cook Strait once, the English and Catalina Channels twice each, and the Strait of Gibraltar three times. One of Palfrey’s three Manhattan swims was 40 minutes faster than Nyad’s. And Palfrey completed a legitimate 40-hour swim, along with other feats too numerous to list.

Nor does Nyad deign to mention that Chloë McCardel swam Manhattan once, Catalina once, the English Channel 37 times (as of October 17, 2020), and a legitimate 41-hour swim. (Update: On October 13, 2021, McCardel completed her 44th crossing, putting her one ahead of Allison Streeter, the previous record-holder for most crossings ever, man or woman.)

Chloë McCardel after her latest 37th English Channel crossing. Via Instagram.

 

 

 

Corrie Dixon & Sandra Bucha

Between the time Illinois great Sandra Bucha joined the pro swimming tour in 1973 and left in 1975, she never lost a race, and she always finished in the top three overall. Nyad finished in the top three once, as part of a two-person relay. Otherwise, she never finished higher than sixth.

When Nyad went head-to-head against Bucha, Nyad lost to her by an average of one hour and twenty minutes per race. The closest Nyad came was 31 minutes. She once lost to Bucha by over three hours.

When Nyad won the 1974 world championship on points, she learned that Sandra Bucha’s parents weren’t happy. In an unctuous attempt to assuage their displeasure, Nyad wrote them a letter in which she brags (“ . . . in 1970 and 1971 I was by far the best female marathoner that the sport had then encountered”—she wasn’t), then whines (“I thought the point system was unfair and felt cheated”), then finally gets around to acknowledging their daughter’s superiority:

 

That part was true. But the thought of denying Sandra Bucha’s dominance would cross the mind of no one but Nyad. I suspect she didn’t win over the Buchas.

As for Corrie Dixon, Nyad beat her once. So it would be more accurate for Diana to say: “with one exception, they were always better than me.”

Above: Corrie Dixon-Ebbelaar after being named World Champion of 1973. Above right: the certificate for Ebbelaar’s record-breaking 1971 English Channel crossing.

 

 

Judith de Nijs

 

Don’t tell that to Judith de Nijs.

The great Dutch swimmer earned six world championships to Diana Nyad’s one.* She’s in the International Swimming Hall of Fame, an honor that continues to elude Diana. And she’s a beloved icon in her native country.

Nyad never mentions de Nijs without mocking and denigrating her.

*In a 1978 press release, Nyad claims that she won the title five times. In fact, she won it once, in 1974, on points. Sandra Bucha trounced her every time they raced that season, but Nyad entered more events. See “When is a world champion not a world champion” and Canadian race totals for 1974.

 

The two met in competition for the first time in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1970. Nyad had a great swim, completing the 10-mile course in record time: 4 hours and 23 minutes, 12 minutes faster than the veteran de Nijs.

But that 12-minute victory has never been enough for Nyad. She has taken those 12 minutes and raised them into years of gloating.

She begins every account of the race by mocking de Nijs’ appearance: “She looked a little more like a linebacker for the Chicago Bears than she did a swimmer” (“The Courage to Succeed”). Then she segues to height and weight:

• “She was six feet tall and weighed 175 pounds.” (Other Shores, p. 30)
• “Judith was six-one, 182 pounds.” (Beachbody Summit, 22:20)
• “Judith de Nijs, a Dutchwoman who stood at six feet tall and weighed 185 pounds—appearing to me more of a tight end than a swimmer.” (Find a Way, p. 59).
• “The women’s world champion at the time, Judith de Nijs, Dutch Olympic butterflier. Six foot one, 187 pounds…. Thunderous thighs.” (K8 East Conference, 19:19)

 

(De Nijs never swam in the Olympics, but the detail makes Nyad’s 12-minute victory appear more epic.)

“I will tell you,” concludes Nyad, “that the beach actually did tremble with each thud of her legs.” (Find a Way, p. 59).

Here’s what Nyad won’t tell you: that she (Nyad) came to Hamilton rested and fresh—the Lake Ontario 10-miler would be the first and only event she completed that summer. Meanwhile, de Nijs, seven years Nyad’s senior, won two events in the month leading up to Hamilton—a 12.5-mile race in Holland and the 20-mile Capri-Napoli contest in Italy—and would compete one more time before the end of the season.

But Nyad can’t tell the truth about Judith de Nijs because that would reveal the truth about Diana Nyad. So to build herself up, she has to tear down de Nijs. And the more Nyad does that, the stronger she feels: “Better than being first woman,” she exults about the Hamilton race, was that “I beat Judith that day (she never swam again). . . . So, you know, you don’t want to kick someone out of the sport altogether, but it is an empowering feeling.” (21:14)

But Nyad did want to kick someone out of the sport. We know this because she wouldn’t have lied about it otherwise. Judith de Nijs did not stop swimming after Hamilton. The next week, she won the 19-mile race at Roberval, Québec. She took the following season off to have a baby, then began racing again in 1972. She didn’t stop until at least 41 years later, when she became the 2013 Dutch open water champion in the women’s 70+ age-group.

Above: Detail from Open Water Boek 2015, p. 69. Produced by the Royal Netherland Swimming Association (KNZB), edited by (and with thanks to) Richard Broer. Image cropped and condensed.

 

Below: Judith de Nijs at an unidentified event sometime in the 1960s or early 1970s. Copyright unknown, via mastersprint.nl.

 

#3: For Unclaimable and Unstealable Accomplishments, Devalue the Achievement and All Who Achieved It

 

The English and Catalina Channels

When Nyad needs to denigrate in bulk, she minimizes entire swims—in particular, swims she either couldn’t finish or never attempted—thus belittling the accomplishments of everyone who has ever tried or completed those swims.

Nyad failed in three attempts to swim the English Channel. In at least one of them, she got lucky and had excellent conditions. But she suffered catastrophic metal fatigue of her steel-trap mind and gave up. Before her English Channel failures, Nyad said that those who succeeded in the Channel had “the heart, the guts, and the courage” to do so. After her failures, she decided that success in the Dover Strait depended entirely on luck.

The resulting fusillade of sour grapes demeaned—and continues to demean—everyone who has ever completed the world’s iconic marathon swim, especially those who succeeded on or around Nyad’s 1976 failures:

• Aug 31: Erdal Acet of Turkey, whose 9:02 would have set a new record if not for…
• Aug 31: Yorkshire’s Wendy Brooke, whose 8:56 made her the first human to cross in under nine hours.
• Sep 5: 16-year-old Chris Sifleet of Devon, England.
• Sep 6: Canadian Cynthia Nicholas, who completed a crossing on the same day as Nyad’s third failure.
• Sep 6: The UK’s Kevin Murphy, completing crossing #5 of a career 34.

 

The following summer, Nicholas returned to England, swam to France, waited a few minutes, and then swam back, making herself the first woman to complete a two-way crossing. You will never, of course, hear Diana Nyad mention her name.

For more details, please see “The English Channel.”

 

Click image for complete article.

 

Special Case: Gertrude Ederle

In August 1926, 19-year-old Gertrude Ederle of New York City, having already set multiple world records and won an Olympic gold medal, became the first woman to swim the English Channel. She bettered the overall record by almost two hours.

Nyad’s pantheon, though, has room for only one at the top, so Ederle had to go:

[I]f I get to the Florida coast, that will be one of the most historic moments in sports. I am not going to compare it to Lindbergh, but it is certainly going to be bigger than Gertrude Ederle finishing the English Channel. (New Times, 26 June 1978)

But it doesn’t get any bigger than the 21-year-old Ederle crossing the Channel hours faster than the fastest man at a time when most women didn’t know how to swim.

Nyad knows this. And she knows that her Cuba-Florida folly can’t compare to other genuinely great accomplishments like Chloë McCardel’s 37 44 English Channel crossings or Sarah Thomas’s monumental English Channel four-way, or Sandra Bucha’s pro circuit dominance, or the six World Championships of Judith de Nijs.

What’s more, we can be confident that, in every race and every crossing, all of the athletes above—except Nyad—swam the entire way under their own power, from shore to shore, in a squeaky clean fashion.

In Nyad’s case, we know nothing of the sort. And I mean that with all due respect.

Manhattan parade for Gertrude Ederle, 1926. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Key West parade for Diana Nyad, 2013. Image via Key West Real Estate Now!

 

 

Blog posts

• “Chasing the Swimmer, part 3: Chloë”
  It wouldn’t be a Nyad presentation if she didn’t denigrate fellow marathoners. In this case, the belittlement occurs during Nyad’s Off-Broadway play, The Swimmer.
• “Nyad names the three best distance swimmers on the planet. You’ll have to guess the other two.”
• “Diana Nyad, The Only One Who Knows”
  This post about Nyad’s 444-finishers talk gives more details about Nyad’s denigration of de Nijs.
• “Treasures From the ISHOF Archives and Beyond”
  Nyad meets Bucha and lies to Ederle.

 

Judith Van Berkel-de Nijs

• Dutch Masters Hall of Fame
• International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame bio/video
• International Swimming Hall of Fame
• Swimming World magazine bio

 

Other great recent swims/swimmers Nyad ignores:

• Jaimie Monahan, first ever Manhattan quadruple
• Caroline Block, first ever Lake George double