Diana Nyad
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Diana Nyad (née Sneed; born August 22, 1949) is an American author, journalist, motivational speaker, and long-distance swimmer. Nyad gained national attention in 1975 when she swam around Manhattan (28 mi or 45 km) in record time. She has written four books and articles for various publications, hosted the public radio program The Savvy Traveler, appeared on the television shows CBS News Sunday Morning and Dancing with the Stars, and been a long-time contributor to the public radio programs All Things Considered and Marketplace. In 2013, on her fifth attempt and at age 64, she swam from Havana, Cuba, to Key West, Florida, a journey of 110 mi (180 km), completing the third known swim crossing of the Florida Straits after Walter Poenisch in 1978 and Susie Maroney in 1997. Both of those earlier efforts involved a shark cage and, in Poenisch's case, fins and several short rests on his escort craft. Nyad did not use fins or a cage, but did swim with a protective jellyfish suit, shark divers, and electronic shark repellent devices. Her crossing from Cuba to Florida was not conducted under the supervision of an organized sporting association, and ratification of the accomplishment was later denied by the World Open Water Swimming Association (WOWSA) for various reasons including incomplete observer logs with a 9-hour undocumented gap in observations, conflicting crew reports, nearly a decade of delay in providing documentation to seek formal ratification, dubious claims about the rules followed for the swim, and "backdated and falsified documentation". Guinness World Records initially certified Nyad's achievement, but revoked its certification after considering the findings by WOWSA. Her 2013 swim and partnership with athlete and businesswoman Bonnie Stoll were dramatized in the 2023 film Nyad, based on her 2015 memoir Find a Way.