• Submitted by: manso
• Sports
• 08 / 10 / 2010

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Athlete failed in 1978 attempt

When Diana Nyad was pulled from the water in 1978 after 41 hours and 49 minutes of swimming in the ocean, she was horribly off course in raging seas. Her dream to swim from Cuba to Florida charted a path that no one has since been able to journey.

Until now. And it just so happens to be her, 32 years later, at age 60.

Well, Nyad hopes to complete the 103-statute mile swim from Cuba without a shark cage this month while still 60. She turns 61 on Aug. 22, and if it takes a few days into her 61st year for conditions to be right, so be it.

She won't repeat the mistake made in 1978.

"The Cubans were growing weary of us being there too long," Nyad said. "I had a guy on my team whose daughter was getting married, he was the head navigator, and he was really sweating getting back in time."

So, off she swam, regardless of the ocean temperament.

"It was heartbreaking, not just for me, but for everybody not to make it across after 42 hours of trying like heck," Nyad said. "I'm not doing that again. I don't care how unnerving it is."

Now, she is waiting for government permission and ideal conditions.

And do not doubt Nyad. On July 11, she swam for 24 hours straight, starting 50 miles offshore in the Gulf Stream and finishing in Florida. That was her warmup for the Cuba swim.

"I'd rather go tomorrow and get it done," she said in July. "I'm ready, that 24-hour (swim) just told me I'm ready."

Nyad etched herself in the long-distance record books while in her 20s, and later, several halls of fame. After the attempt
from Cuba, she set a world record for continuous swimming, going 102.5 miles from the Bahamas to Florida in 1979.

Then, like many world-class swimmers who've had enough, she didn't take another swim stroke for 30 years.

"I was driven, I wanted to be the best in the world, wanted to do things nobody else could ever do, Olympic dreams," Nyad said. "But when you're doing it at that extreme level of literally six to seven hours a day hard, it's not fun like tennis, it's not fun like a team sport. You're isolated and it takes a huge amount of discipline and that's why a lot of kids get burned out."

Source: www.floridatoday.com/