KEY WEST, FLORIDA – An asthma attack, a painful shoulder and battering wind and waves yesterday forced swimmer Diana Nyad (61) to abandon her attempt to become the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage.
The Florida woman, who tried and failed the 166km (103-mile) swim more than three decades ago aged 28, gave up after enduring nearly 30 hours of a crossing expected to last 60, exhausted by her body’s limits and the force of the elements.
“I thought this was my time” she told Reuters after her escort boat Bellisimo brought her to the Key West Yacht Club on Stock Island. “We set out thinking the conditions were favourable. They were not. The winds were stronger and the waves were bigger than what I’d expected.”
Ms Nyad, a veteran long-distance swimmer, had started out strongly, stroking rhythmically through calm seas after she dived off from the Marina Hemingway on the western outskirts of Cuba’s capital Havana on Sunday evening. However, she said in an interview with CNN, she suffered an unexpected bout of asthma that left her gasping for oxygen.
An “excruciating pain” also developed in her right shoulder. These physical handicaps combined with contrary winds and seas pushed her floundering off-course.
“Last night at midnight, I was trembling, the 11 hours of asthma had taken so much from my body . . . I just knew that it wasn’t mind over matter any more, I was absolutely spent,” Ms Nyad, wearing a white bathrobe, told CNN at Stock Island.
She said that towards the end she was “limping” and “slapping around” in the water and even resorted to breast stroke instead of her usual crawl. Her doctor joined her in the water at one point to try to give her relief with an inhaler.
CNN, which had a producer on one of the boats accompanying Ms Nyad, said she was vomiting when she was brought aboard an escort boat at 12.45am yesterday.
Ms Nyad, who later recovered to breakfast on scrambled eggs on her way to Key West, was disappointed but had no regrets about her motives for attempting the swim. She turns 62 this month.
She said her main aim was to help people her age and older realise they could still achieve many things. “I was the best person I could be . . . that’s the message . . . Whatever you’re doing, do your job well.” – (Reuters)