Diana Nyad used just one word - "euphoric" - to
describe how she felt upon reaching the shores of Key West at the end of a
112-mile, record-breaking swim.
But it was three words that Nyad, 64, relied on over the
past year, she revealed to conquer a feat - swimming from Cuba to Florida
without a shark tank - that had previously eluded any other human being and
Nyad herself in her four previous attempts.
"I decided this year to use a mantra … and the phrase I
decided to use was 'Find a way.'"
"If something is important to you and it looks
impossible and you're up against it, just step back for a minute and say,
'Really? Do I have the resolve to think of everything to the nth degree to get
through this?' and most times we do," she said. "People give up too
quickly."
Nyad never gave up in this, her fifth attempt, at the swim,
even when her face and body were lacerated from the saltwater and the
custom-made mask she wore to protect herself from box jellyfish, a stinging
jellyfish that had caused her to stop her last attempt because of burns left on
her limbs and face.
In the final homestretch, Nyad, a Los Angeles native who
made her first try at the record in 1978 at age 28, said she and her 35-member
crew could see the lights of Key West ahead, which focused her mind and changed
her thinking.
"I had 15 hours to think. Fifteen hours to stroke and
think about this journey," Nyad said. "You know, so many people
discuss the journey and the destination. Well, the destination was always my
vision of the palm trees and the shore, but the journey, I didn't make it, for
the last few years and that journey was thrilling. It really was. The
discovery, the people, the looking inside of what you're made of but to finally
get to the destination?"
"I tell you, I was euphoric yesterday," she said.
A competitive swimmer from early on, Nyad began striving for
the Olympics as a young girl but was sidelined at 17 with endocarditis, a virus
in her heart. She overcame that ailment and swam the 28 miles around the island
of Manhattan in just under eight hours in 1975 and, four years later, swam the
102 miles from North Bimini, Bahamas, to Juno Beach, Fla., in 27.5 hours.
Nyad said she may have been a more physically capable
swimmer in those days, in her youth, but that there was a reason she
accomplished her goal of swimming from Cuba to Florida this year, at the age of
64.
"How many athletes do you know, John McEnroe is one for
sure, who say that they wish they could have played at the world class level in
their 50s and their 60s because the power of concentration and their perspective
of what it all means and what you're capable of are infinitely higher at this
age than when you're a young 20-something?" she said. "I really do
believe that endurance grows and, also, we can never discount, in any sport,
the mental aspect."
When Nyad walked up onto Smathers Beach in Key West Monday
afternoon surrounded by her supporters to chants of "Nyad, Nyad,
Nyad," she, through her fatigue, told the crowd to "Never, ever give
up."
Nyad's message quickly became the headline of her
record-breaking swim, an occurrence she said happened because her feat wasn't
really about the swimming at all.
"I didn't have much energy to talk for too long, but he
first thing I said, I looked around, because those people weren't from the
world of swimming," she said. "They don't care about the world
record. It wasn't an athletic event. It was a moment of human spirit."
