DIANA NYAD AND THE 'CRYING GAME'

 

 

OK, I get it. Athletes and cheating go together like Facebook and our addiction to social
media. Ben Johnson, Marion Jones, SpyGate, name a school on NCAA probation, Lance
Armstrong, A-Rod, NASCAR crews, etc. The list of cheaters in sports is longer than the
Great Wall of China. Heck, even the Chinese badminton team lost on purpose to try to get a
better seed in the London Olympic games.

Cheating has become so prevalent in sports that everyone has become a suspect, especially
when a great feat is accomplished.

Last Monday, 64-year old Diana Nyad, accomplished something truly special when she
became the first person to swim from Cuba to the Florida without a shark cage.

Now, there are skeptics who don't think Nyad's 103-mile swim is legit. Shocking.

A small group of marathon swimmers and their officials don't think a lot of things add
up in Nyad's swim. They are questioning why an independent observer wasn't on her boat
to document every aspect of her swim from her strokes per minute to the number of times
she ate and drink.

There are numbers geeks who have studied the GPS coordinates of Nyad's swim and don't
think everything is on the up and up. Some don't think Nyad followed the English Channel
swim protocol that says you can't wear a special suit, mask, touch the boat or get any kind
of assistance. I'm sure they think Nyad was probably linked to Anthony Bosch and the
Biogenesis Clinic in Miami, too.

My response? Stop, just stop it. Go home and get a life.

Here is a woman who swam 53 hours in flat-out scary waters and did it without a shark
cage and now people want to discredit. Nyad and Nyad alone did the swim. If they are
so obsessed with Nyad's "honesty" then they should get in the water and see if they can
do it. I'll get in my dingy and be their guide. I'll count all your strokes, rub sunscreen on
your face, and even feed you.

Nyad's swim wasn't so much about being "the first", but about the journey. It was about
failing again and again and again and again, and coming back to try until she made it. She
didn't quit and persevered when the odds were stacked against her.

Does this marathon swimming group think that Nyad is the Rosie Ruiz of open water
swimming? Rosie was the runner who hopped on the T in Boston on her way to winning
the Boston Marathon in 1980. Do they think Nyad boarded a nuclear submarine under the
cover of darkness to take her closer to her destination? Do they think that Nyad put fins
on when she wasn't supposed to? Good, Lord.

She swam more than 100 miles! What the heck were you doing during that time? How
come that marathon swimming group didn't beat Nyad to being "the first" to do it without
a cage?

This is what many of the people in our country do. They weren't the first, so they try to
discredit the people who were. They are the armchairs quarterbacks who never played the
game, or weren't good enough to, but they somehow think they can do it better than
the people who are actually in the arena competing.

Fans watching a baseball game see there favorite player swing at a pitch out of the strike
zone and they yell, "What the hell are you swinging at? I wouldn't have swung at that."
Yeah, except that you weren't good enough to get in there against Justin Verlander who
is throwing 98-miles-an-hour with wicked breaking stuff. Yeah, it looks oh so easy on
television.

Nyad did something truly incredible. I don't care if she hung on the side of a boat for
five minutes. Big whoop-de-do. I don't care if she had streamers guiding her at night. Did
that help her physically to finish the swim? Again, Nyad swam more than 100-miles in
the ocean with sharks and who knows what else.

Leave Nyad and her record alone. She got into the ocean, not you, and did what had
never been done before.  Go spend some more time swimming in the ocean than trying
to discredit someone who wanted it more than you did.