I was intrigued to read about open-water endurance swimmer Diana Nyad and her dream of finally completing a 103-mile swim from Cuba to Florida at age 60. The feat eluded her when she tried to accomplish it 32 years ago.
Back then, jellyfish stings, a badly swollen tongue and rough waves forced her to quit after nearly 42 straight hours in the water, 80 to 85 miles short of Key West. Nyad--who has gone on to have second and third acts as a TV and radio sports reporter and commentator and as a web-based fitness trainer--no longer has the incentive of trying to accomplish an unprecedented feat (former Australian distance swimmer Susie Maroney conquered the Florida Straits in 1997). This time her motivation is to make a statement about age and human potential.
As Nyad recently told CNN: "I would be lying if I said I'd just been stewing over this for 30 years. I really haven't. The issue here isn't as much about making that big athletic dream. Really, bigger than that is this existential grappling about being 60."
To Nyad, finally completing her Cuba-to-Florida swim is a means of striking a blow against ageism, and showing her fellow boomers what they still are capable of accomplishing. "When I walk up on that shore in Florida, I want millions of those AARP sisters and brothers to look at me and say, 'I'm going to write that novel I thought it was too late to do. I'm going to go work in Africa on that farm that people need help at. I'm going to adopt a child. It's not too late. I can still achieve my dreams.'"
I've been fascinated by Nyad since I read a profile of her in the old New Times magazine in the late 1970s. Back then, she stood out not just because of her startling feats in the water--swimming around Manhattan island a record time of just under eight hours, for example, and swimming 102.5 miles from the Bahamas to Florida--but because of her brutal, almost inhuman exercise regimen, which included 10-mile morning runs and workouts on Nautilus machines (remember those?), in addition to many, many hours in the water. That was way more than most elite male athletes did, and she took a ball-peen hammer to the stereotype that women were comparatively fragile creatures.
Nyad wasn't some serene endomorphin junkie. She always has been assertive, aggressive, maybe a little ticked off at the world. In this 1977 Daytona Beach Morning Journal interview, for example, she vented about what she saw as inadequate recognition and economic rewards for her sport: "I feel a real sense of bitterness when I turn on the TV and see men and women bowling for $300,000." When absurdist comic Andy Kaufman. the self-proclaimed inter-gender wrestling champion, famously challenged Nyad to a match, it was funny because he and everybody else knew that she would have totally kicked his posterior. In a sense, she was a prototype for the Linda Hamilton-Demi Moore cinematic action heroine of the 1990s, those hard-edged women with those sinewy deltoids and that insane pain tolerance.
Nyad hasn't yet set a date for her Cuba-to-Florida swim, but you can keep up with her on Twitter (@diananyad) or by reading her blog. Also, you can download a podcast or listen to the streaming version of her thought-provoking sports commentary show, The Score, from KCRW in Los Angeles.
Judging from the 24-hour training swim that she recently completed off the Florida coast, Nyad still has more than enough of her mojo left to make it from Cuba to Florida. I'll be rooting for her all the way. Even so, I have mixed feelings about her stated reason for making the attempt, well-intentioned as it is. The truth is, a lot of boomers--including the ones you read about on this website--already are doing a lot of the things that Nyad hopes we would do, and we don't necessarily need someone to prove to us that anything is possible. Besides, she proved that to us long ago. I'd rather that she do this one for herself, just to enjoy the challenge again.