When, at the age of 64, Diana Nyad made her fifth attempt at swimming from Cuba to Florida, her chief concern was that she would be pursued by a shark — because she was aiming to become the first person to achieve the feat without the aid of a cage to protect her from the big-toothed blighters.
These days, she might well feel just as uncomfortable about being pursued by Daniel Slosberg, the former marathon swimmer who appears to have made it his life’s work to question any claims Nyad has made about her sporting career.
He’s certainly made it his mission since launching his website nyadfactcheck.com seven years ago.
He details what he says are “51 fabrications” uttered by Nyad along the way, among them her description of her first professional race. “It was a long day — 37 hours and 38 minutes across Lake Ontario,” she said. Except he says that she swam for a mere four hours and 23 minutes.
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“The lake was 48 degrees ... I finished third among the 444 that day,” she said. Slosberg: “She finished 10th out of 30 starters. Water temperature: between 64 and 66 degrees. If 444 swimmers had spent 30+ hours in 48-degree water, 444 swimmers would have died.”
The 1968 Olympic Trials? “I remember it like it was yesterday,” said Nyad, “I looked up at the electronic scoreboard and I was sixth.” Slosberg: “The 1968 women’s trials didn’t have an electronic scoreboard. Nyad didn’t know that, though, because she wasn’t there.”
Nyad: “I became, in the 1970s, the best ocean swimmer in the world. I held all the major records on planet Earth, out in the open sea.” Slosberg: “Diana Nyad hasn’t completed a single one of the major ocean swims on the planet, much less held records in them. She has never come close to being the best ocean swimmer of any decade.”
Nyad: “They’re erecting a bronze statue of me in Key West. Oh my!” Slosberg: “They are not erecting a statue of Diana Nyad in Key West.”
And on and on. You get the drift. Tricky.
With that track record, then, Slosberg, it would be fair to say, has his doubts about Nyad’s claim that she completed that 2013 swim from Havana to Key West “under her own power. The available data indicates she did not,” he says.
GPS data is part of the problem, showing, as it did, a dramatic increase in speed midway through the swim, which left Nyad’s doubters concluding that she had hitched a lift from her support boat. The fact that all 53 hours of the swim weren’t recorded prompted more suspicion, as did the fact that the supposedly “independent” witnesses to the achievement were all her mates.
Slosberg is not alone in having his doubts. The World Open Water Swimming Association refused to ratify the swim, which led to the Guinness World Records rescinding their recognition of it.
All of this is decidedly awkward for the Oscars folk because Annette Bening, who plays the swimmer in Nyad, which opens in cinemas today and will be on Netflix from November 3rd, is being tipped for the Best Actress award.
The excellently abbreviated Wowsa, who “exhaustively researched” Nyad’s (alleged) feat, according to the Los Angeles Times, and produced a report under the ominously titled “The Swim, the Scandal, the Silence”, advised viewers of the film to “watch with discernment, keeping in mind the discrepancies about the swim”.
Because the film is based on Nyad’s own memoir, Find a Way, Slosberg is chucking his eyeballs in a heavenly direction, a touch doubtful that it will examine these alleged fabrications. Although, in fairness, according to Tara Brady in her review of the film earlier this week, she says its directors, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, revelled “in Nyad’s reputation as a thundering wagon”.
Nyad has, of course, denied all the allegations made against her, while conceding that she has told a few porkie pies down the years. She puts the “smears” down to jealousy, insisting that her Cuba to Florida swim made women of her age believe anything was possible.
But was it make-believe? Who the heck knows? Because she told 51 fabrications in the past doesn’t prove that she didn’t swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage. It’s a big relief, though, that 444 swimmers didn’t die in Lake Ontario on that 1970 day.
