Thoughts on Diana Nyad, the Controversy, and Conflict Within ‘Wild Swimming’

The controversy over Diana Nyad‘s famous (or infamous) swim from Cuba to Florida has been reignited by an upcoming Netflix biopic on the topic, dragging the sport back into a controversy that rears its head every couple of years. This has brought two of wild swimming’s monoliths into a seeming conflict – though that conflict, despite its aggressive portrayal, might not actually leave the two sides that far apart.

The validity of any record is dependent on the people and organizations who are most qualified to confirm those records establishing a set of standards that are uniform, and then ‘everybody else’ sort of accepting that those standards make sense. Then ‘everybody else’ talks about and refers to those records until they become normalized.

We saw this play heavily in pool swimming, where the FINA/AQUA standards didn’t make sense to most of the public, so you would hear things like “the real World Junior Record”, which discounted the FINA-recognized World Junior Records.

I *think* that both WOWSA and Evan Morrison, who sit near the top of the list of most qualified individuals/orgs to create these uniform standards, generally agree that Nyad’s swim did not meet the best set of standards that would be applied today to this swim.

I *think* they’d also like their sport to move past this controversy (though objectively, it brings more attention to it, even if it’s annoying attention).

Where they conflict is in what to do about it.

WOWSA wants to reject ratification to put it to rest (which won’t work). Morrison wants to ratify in some special category that MSF currently doesn’t have (which won’t work if Nyad doesn’t accept that asterisk).

Probably neither works with the movie coming out.

Morrison thinks it’s unfair to apply a standard that didn’t exist at the time of Nyad’s swim, which I think is a reasonable take; but most people looking at the data and information available would probably conclude the same as the reasonability standard being applied by WOWSA – that there’s not enough evidence available that the swim happened unassisted. So we’re left in this weird wormhole where these two orgs agree and disagree in the same way.

And so the controversy will continue – and neither will get the thing that they both want.

All this is happening while Andreas Waschburger is awaiting ratification on a new English Channel record, which might itself be facing an uphill battle for ratification. The world’s most famous open water swim has more than one ratifying organization, including the Channel Swimming Association, which states that “the costume may not extend on to the Upper Leg below the level of the crotch.” It appears that Waschberger’s suit does extend beyond the “Upper leg below the level of the crotch,” and so shouldn’t be ratified by the Channel Swimming Association’s rules (which doesn’t recognize a wetsuit category). The Channel Swimming & Piloting Federation, however, does allow textile suits to the knee, saying that the swim was approved in advance as being within their rules.

While the Channel Swimming Association is an accepted authority on English Channel swims, Waschberger tagged his posts on social media #guinessworldrecords, and Guinness, which has become eponymous with record setting of all types, has their own standards. Guinness, by the way, has removed Nyad’s records after the WOWSA ratification rejection, as they often rely on more specific experts of a topic for their own ratification standards. If the CS&P ratifies it, it is likely that Guinness will as well, even if the CSA does not.

Nothing has ever been easy in open water swimming, one of the most grueling sports in existence, and the caretakers of that sport are a passionate bunch who believe deeply in a certain ethos that is unique among sport. For all of their conflicts, that is something that will continue to unite them.