Diana Nyad’s Most Controversial Swim Inspired the New Netflix Movie ‘Nyad’
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Diana Nyad had already secured her reputation as one of the greatest marathon swimmers in the world, and she had nothing to prove to anybody—except herself.
A member of the U.S. National Women’s Sports Hall of Fame and the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame, Nyad had set several records for both men and women during her distinguished career and achieved nationwide attention when she set a world record by swimming around Manhattan in less than eight hours in 1975.
But she had failed to achieve one of her most ambitious career goals: swimming straight from Cuba to Florida without a protective shark cage. Failed, that is, until her fifth try in 2013 when the 64-year-old successfully accomplished the 110-mile swim after 53 hours of nonstop swimming.
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“It’s a great story,” Nyad said after the swim. “You have a dream 35 years ago—doesn’t come to fruition, but you move on with life. But it’s somewhere back there. Then you turn 60 [and] you’re looking for something. And the dream comes waking out of your imagination.”
That inspirational accomplishment—which has courted criticism for years—is the focus of Nyad, a new movie that began streaming on Netflix Friday. Directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasahelyi and Jimmy Chin, the film is based on a memoir Nyad, now 74, wrote called Find a Way. Annette Bening stars as the titular swimmer in the movie, and Jodie Foster plays her longtime friend and training coach Bonnie Stoll.
Here’s how the real Diana Nyad became a marathon swimmer, set her sights on the Cuba-to-Florida route, and why her famous swim is still considered controversial.
Finding an Escape in Swimming
Born on August 22, 1949, in New York City, Diana was the daughter of a New York stockbroker. Her parents divorced when she was 3, and her mother, Lucy Curtis, later got remarried to land developer Aristotle Nyad, who formally adopted Diana. The family moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where Diana began swimming seriously at age 11, according to Great Women Athletes of the 20th Century by Robert J. Condon.
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As a teen, Nyad attended Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale, where she was taught by Olympian and Hall of Fame swimming coach Jack Nelson. According to Nyad, Nelson started molesting her when she was 14 and continued until she graduated. Her anger over the abuse and desire to overcome it later fueled her determination with swimming.
“In the water, I felt safe,” Nyad said.
Nyad became a champion swimmer early in life, winning three Florida state high school championships in the backstroke. She dreamed of competing in the 1968 Summer Olympics but, in 1966, was forced to spend three months in bed with endocarditis, a rare heart infection. When she got back to the water, she had lost enough speed to dash her dreams.
Gaining National Fame
Now lacking the speed required for swim sprints, Nyad instead shifted her focus to marathon swimming, receiving instruction from Buck Dawson, director of the International Swimming Hall of Fame, at his camp in Magnetawan, Ontario, according to The Lavender Locker Room by Patricia Nell Warren.
Nyad set a women’s world record in her first long-distance race in 1970, when she finished a 10-mile swim in Lake Ontario in 4 hours and 22 minutes, according to Time in a Bottle by Howard Falco. It was the first of many records she set during her career. Another was when she finished the 22-mile Bay of Naples race in 8 hours and 11 minutes in 1974.
The next year, Nyad found herself in the national spotlight after swimming around the island of Manhattan in 7 hours and 57 minutes, breaking the world record by a whopping 59 minutes. “I knew I’d make it,” she told reporters and spectators after finishing the feat. “I feel very proud. It’s not easy to swim around this island.”
However, one of her long-time goals initially eluded her. She dreamed of becoming the first person to swim straight from Cuba to Florida without a protective shark cage and made her first attempt in 1978 at age 28. She swam 68 miles before strong winds forced her to stop, and her three additional attempts over the next several years were also unsuccessful, according to Falco.
Going for Her Goal, then Facing Critics
Nyad achieved another of her most famous accomplishments during her 30th birthday, when she swam 102 miles from Bimini in the Bahamas to Juno Beach, Florida, in 27 hours 30 minutes on August 21 and 22, 1979. Aided by favorable winds, she averaged 3.7 miles per hour and set a distance record for both men and women for nonstop swimming, according to Sisterhood in Sports by Joan Steidinger.
That marked the final competitive swim of her career, but Nyad’s greatest accomplishment was yet to come. In 2013, 35 years after her first try, the 64-year-old Nyad attempted to swim from Cuba to Florida for a fifth time.
She began the 110-mile swim in Havana, where she spent the next 53 hours swimming through shark- and jellyfish-infested waters. Nyad endured severe winds during the swim and vomited several times after swallowing too much seawater. Nevertheless, she succeeded, becoming the first person in history to make the swim.
Almost immediately, some people criticized her methods and cast doubt on the swim itself. They complained she didn’t follow the English Channel rules that specify an unassisted swimmer can only use a cap and goggles and can never be touched in the water. Nyad, who wasn’t bound to following those rules, relied on a specialized suit and mask to prevent possibly fatal jellyfish stings. Her support team helped as she put on and removed the gear during the swim, which led to incidental contact.
Critics also questioned pace inconsistencies that Nyad, her team, and scientific analysis chalk up to favorable currents. A lack of independent observers and incomplete records were other issues. Ultimately, the crossing has never been formally ratified, and the Guinness Book of World Records no longer recognizes Nyad’s achievement.
“I thought we had provided all the proof we needed,” Nyad told The Los Angeles Times in August 2023. “And maybe I had too much hubris, like, ‘I don’t need to prove this to anybody.’ That’s my bad. But it wasn’t to obfuscate the rules. We were never told, ‘You’ve got to do this or you won’t be ratified.’”
A 2022 report by the World Open Water Swimming Association on the famed Cuba-to-Florida swim put at least one of Nyad’s critics at ease. “There’s no evidence there was any kind of cheating,” Marathon Swimmers Federation cofounder Evan Morrison told the Times. “From my perspective, according to the current standards of the sport, she did an assisted swim from Cuba to Florida.” Nyad told the newspaper she would accept the crossing if it were to be ratified as an assisted swim.
Even with the controversy, Nyad’s feat offers a lesson in determination. “Diana shows that at any age, you can do whatever you want,” said Nancy Jordan, a volunteer pilot on one of Nyad’s support vessels during the swim. “That’s what she set out to show: Don’t ever give up on your dream.”
Watch Nyad on Netflix
Nyad is now streaming on Netflix. The cast includes Annette Bening, Jodie Foster, Rhys Ifans, Karly Rothenberg, and Jeena Yi. The movie was directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasahelyi and Jimmy Chin and written by Julia Cox.
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