Diana Nyad was the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage. She did the 110-mile swim when she was 60 years old—a task she had failed to accomplish thirty years prior.
It took 53 hours.
Known as one of the premier endurance athletes alive, Diana says the solo effort was very much a piece of teamwork.
"It looks like the most solitary endeavor in the world, doesn't it? If you are swimming for 53 continuous hours, only one person has the left arm coming out and the right arm," Nyad told KCLU. "But right over to my left was the team. That was Bonnie, whom Jodie Foster played in the movie, in charge of my life. That was the shark divers in charge of my life. The jellyfish experts, the navigation team, the medical team, the nutrition team, and never would I have made it to that other shore without that team. So it looks like a solitary, 'oh, I'm the hero', but not at all. We did this together."
Despite the dangers of the epic feat, Nyad said she couldn't allow herself to be scared.
"Fear can't come into it, just like a race car driver can't be afraid that they're going to crash into the wall and die," said Nyad. "So I made sure that not only did I have my own swimming skills, but that team that I got with the top shark experts in the tropics who know those animals. They know how they behave. They know they don't want to eat human food, but they might come up to take a little leg every now and then. You know, I have to trust them. I can't go out saying, well, I'll look out for the sharks. You know I'm breathing to the left, 53 times a minute. How am I going to defend myself?" she said.
Her advice is valid not just for extreme adventures, but for any leadership situation.
"I've got to develop a team who's intelligent, who's experienced, and then I have to trust them and I have to let go and not be afraid," she said.
It’s as a ground-breaking role model that she’s being honored not for her swimming, but for her bravery in speaking up about the sexual violence she encountered as a young swimmer.
"I'm sort of on this seesaw between very much and always have been, recognizing that people go through much worse than what I've gone through. We all have heartache. It's part of the human condition. And when you think about the eight billion people on the planet, half of whom don't have enough clear water to drink every day, you know, my life is a picnic," she says of the impact of the abuse.
"On the other hand, I can't live anybody else's life. So I have to just live the facts of my life and that sexual abuse by my coach, my beloved coach who silenced me and shamed me—and I was a strong together little teenager and preteen—but I have say that it has marred my life in a deep, deep way all my life," she told KCLU.
Diana Nyad will be honored on Wednesday at the Coalition for Family Harmony’s Denim Day Event to raise money for services provided for survivors of sexual assault in Ventura County.
