Diana NyadEndurance & UltrasHigh Achievement — Women

Diana Nyad

First Person to Swim Cuba to Florida Without a Shark Cage, at 64

Diana Nyad is the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without a protective shark cage — a 110-mile open-water crossing through jellyfish-infested water that she completed in 52 hours and 54 minutes on September 2, 2013. She was 64 years old. It was her fifth attempt at the same swim, the first having been in 1978 at age 28. She had failed at it for 35 years. Her three messages on the beach at Key West afterward, slurred from saltwater swelling in her mouth, were: never give up; you are never too old to chase your dreams; it looks like a solitary sport, but it takes a team.

110 mi Cuba to Florida Swim

64 Age at Successful Crossing

5th Attempt at the Swim

52:54 Hours in the Water

About Diana Nyad

Diana Nyad was born Diana Sneed on August 22, 1949 in New York City and raised in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She started competitive swimming at 10, was a champion in high school, and after Lake Forest College set a series of marathon swimming records in the 1970s — including a 28-mile swim around Manhattan in under 8 hours and a 102.5-mile swim from the Bahamas to Florida that stood as a world record. In 1978, at 28, she made her first attempt to swim from Havana to Key West. She lasted 42 hours before currents pushed her off course and she was pulled out.

After turning 30 she walked away from marathon swimming completely and built a second career as a broadcast journalist for ABC, NBC, and CBS, covering five Olympic Games. She did not take another stroke for 30 years.

She returned to the Cuba swim in 2010 at age 60, telling reporters she wanted to prove to other 60-year-olds it was never too late to start their dreams. She failed in 2010. She failed in August 2011, pulled out after 29 hours from an asthma attack. She failed again in late September 2011 after 40 hours when jellyfish stings nearly killed her. She failed in 2012 after 60 hours when a lightning storm and other obstacles forced her out. Each failure was on national television. Each failure produced a wave of opinion that the swim was simply not possible at her age in those waters, and that she should stop.

On August 31, 2013, with a custom-built jellyfish face mask designed after the 2011 stings, a 35-person support team, and her coach Bonnie Stoll on board, she walked into the water at Marina Hemingway in Havana for the fifth time. Fifty-two hours and 54 minutes later, on September 2, she walked onto Smathers Beach in Key West. She had become the first person ever to swim the 110-mile crossing without a shark cage. She was 64. She gave the speech that has been quoted in commencement addresses ever since — never give up, never too old, it takes a team — and was helped to a hospital. Her 2015 memoir Find a Way and the 2023 Netflix film NYAD, starring Annette Bening as Nyad and Jodie Foster as Bonnie Stoll, both center on the question of why someone keeps coming back to the water that has spent 35 years rejecting her.