Guest Editorial: Steps Away from Hall of Fame, Fort Lauderdale Honors Swimming\u2019s Greatest Fraud<\/p>\n
By Daniel Slosberg<\/p>\n
If the City of Fort Lauderdale\u2019s International Swimming Hall of Fame (ISHOF) ever completes construction of its new home, visitors will be able to learn about the sport\u2019s greatest champions, then walk five minutes to a plaque honoring swimming\u2019s greatest fraud.<\/p>\n
Fort Lauderdale unveiled a Florida State Historical Marker for Diana Nyad on November 6. About 100 guests \u2014 friends, relatives, politicians, and other admirers \u2014 gathered across Highway A1A from Las Olas Beach to hear speeches celebrating the ostensible \u201cfirst person to swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mayor Dean Trantalis declared it \u201cDiana Nyad Day.\u201d Tennis legend and Fort Lauderdale native Chris Evert praised Nyad as \u201cone of the most real and authentic women I\u2019ve ever known\u2026We celebrate your voice and your courage and the truth that you\u2019ve always lived by.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beside Evert stood Nyad, immaculate in a cream pantsuit. She radiated confidence and charisma, which great liars like Nyad depend on us mistaking for authenticity. The City Commission voted to place the Marker at Las Olas because Nyad claims she trained there for her marathon swims (but Nyad didn\u2019t learn about the sport until years after she left Florida).\u00a0<\/p>\n
And she claims it\u2019s where her mother planted the idea for the Cuba crossing. Nyad told that story at the unveiling: She was 9 years old, and the Cuban Revolution had just ended. She asked where Cuba was located, and her mom pointed out to sea and said, \u201cIt\u2019s right there. It\u2019s so close, you little champion swimmer, you could actually swim there.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Not a word of that is true. Nyad began swimming competitively at 12 and won her first championship at 14. But the story had to align with the end of the Cuban Revolution, so she made herself nine. She didn\u2019t begin telling that story until 2014. Before that, she always discovered the Cuba swim by studying maps and charts<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Nyad built her career on what sportswriter Dave Heeren calls a \u201creverse hustle,\u201d convincing the public and media that she\u2019s a far better swimmer than she is. Most people know so little about marathon swimming that they believe her. But people who know the sport are likely to agree with Hall of Fame swim coach and English Channel swimmer James \u201cDoc\u201d Counsilman<\/a>: \u201cShe\u2019s a very mediocre swimmer with a very good publicist. Most of her swims have been failures.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Heeren wrote about South Florida sports for over 40 years. He admired Nyad<\/a> at first but\u00a0 eventually saw through her bluster.<\/a>\u00a0She has become such a master of hyperbole that she always seems able to lure a lapdog crowd of media to her events. Ability to mesmerize the media has enabled her to reap a substantial income from a poorly subsidized sport even after three Channel failures.\u00a0Nyad made three unsuccessful English Channel attempts<\/a> in 1976 and never returned.<\/p>\n I hear the complaints: \u201cMen hate outspoken women.\u201d Just before Nyad made her first Cuba-Florida attempt, Connie Sjostrom of the Fort Lauderdale News blasted Nyad<\/a> as \u201cthe Queen of Hype.\u201d In the New York Review of Books, Novelist Mary Gordon panned<\/a> Nyad\u2019s first memoir, Other Shores, saying, \u201cIt is nearly always a mistake to give accounts of one\u2019s own heroism.\u201d<\/p>\n But Nyad does more than trumpet her self-declared greatness. She has lied so brazenly for so long that almost no one questions her fabrications. Like finishing sixth<\/a> in the 100-meter backstroke at the Olympic Trials \u2014 Nyad never qualified for the Trials. Or becoming the first woman to swim around Manhattan \u2014 she was seventh. Or winning a 37-hour race in 48\u00b0 water<\/a> \u2014 she\u2019d have raced most of the event as a corpse.<\/p>\n Or swimming from Cuba to Florida \u201cfair and square, shore to shore.\u201d<\/a> For over a decade, Nyad has prodded governing organizations to ratify her crossing. No takers.<\/p>\n Dr. Lynette Long, founder of Equal Opportunity Everywhere, first applied for a Nyad Marker in 2017. The City rejected her application after Brent Rutemiller, then-Director of ISHOF, spoke out about Nyad\u2019s lies<\/a>. Rutemiller had retired by the time the Commissioners reconsidered the Marker in 2024. The Hall, desperate for City funds to help rebuild, offered only mild resistance.\u00a0<\/p>\n The City rubber-stamped the Marker last April. Local journalists could have worked to expose Nyad, but she seduced them, too. They regurgitated decade-old platitudes<\/a>: So inspiring! Sixty-four-year-old LGBTQ swimmer finally achieves lifelong dream after five attempts. Sharks! Jellyfish!! Trauma!!!\u00a0<\/p>\n