63-year-old swimmer Diana Nyad has failed in her attempt to swim from Cuba to Florida after suffering repeated jellyfish stings and labouring through heavy storms.
Diana Nyad has ended her fourth attempt in nearly 35 years to swim across the Straits of Florida, her dream of setting a record thwarted by storms, jellyfish stings, shark threats, hypothermia and swollen lips.
Storms brewing around Diana Nyad and repeated jellyfish stings forced her out of the water. Swimmer Diana Nyad travelled by boat close to a rocky shoreline in Key West yesterday afternoon, just over 72 hours after setting out from Cuba. Nyad made a final short swim to a waiting crowd.
She said : ‘ I’ve been dreaming of this crossing for 35 years now and tried it four times. And should I say that there’s no disappointment? No. I’m not going to get that moment I dreamed of for so long. ‘
Diana Nyad forced to stop her 4th swim attempt from Cuba to Florida
Diana Nyad, was making her third attempt since last summer to become the first person to cross the Florida Straits without a shark cage. She also made a failed try with a cage in 1978.
63-year-old swimmer Diana Nyad had previously said this would be her last attempt, though she made the same promise to her friends and handlers last September as she stepped from her boat onto a Key West dock, her lips and limbs red and swollen from jellyfish stings.
Diana Nyad’s support team have been regularly updating her blog since Saturday. Nyad’s official website reported on Tuesday early in the morning that Nyad had been pulled from the water.
She had been suffering from swelling to the lips and tongue after she endured 2 nights of jellyfish swarms, some of them from the potentially deadly box jellyfish.
Diana Nyad has commented : ‘ I just don’t want to spend the rest of my life trying and failing and trying and failing this, but it’s a bear of a swim. I would hate to stand here again with you next year and say – well, didn’t make it again. ‘
Diana Nyad spended 41 hours and 45 minutes of swim time. Her team acknowledged at 8 am that she had to be pulled from the water, but said it had been about twenty minutes earlier, not nearly 7 hours earlier as was the case. Nyad also spent time out of the water during a stormy Sunday night, though that was not acknowledged until Tuesday afternoon.
Diana Nyad quits swim after jellyfish stings
Australian Susie Maroney successfully swam the Straits in 1997, but she used a shark cage. In June, another Australian, Penny Palfrey, 127 kilometres toward Florida without a cage before strong currents forced her to abandon the attempt.
Monday night proved the most challenging of all for Diana Nyad, with team members fending off sharks, waves crashing in stormy weather, jellyfish sting after sting, and Nyad fighting off a lowered body temperature and the threat of hypothermia.
A member of Diana Nyad’s team, Vanessa Linsley said : ‘ Instead of getting hit with one doozy they got hit with three. They got hit with the weather, they got hit with the jellyfish and they got hit with the sharks all at the same time. ‘
Diana Nyad had been training for 3 years for the attempt. She was accompanied by a support team in boats, and a kayak-borne apparatus shadowing her to keep sharks at bay by generating a faint electric field. A team of handlers was on alert to dive in and distract any sharks that made it through.
She took periodic short breaks to rest, hydrate and eat high-energy foods such as peanut butter. Diana Nyad said she had been reduced to tears several times — and expected more to flow — but turned reflective after arriving in Key West.
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