Over the holidays I was talking to some family members about the most impressive things that happened in sports in 2013 and I said I thought Nyad's swim was the clear winner and they said it was a hoax. So since then I've done a little research and I gotta say what I learned makes me very skeptical. This link to a thread in the marathon swimmer's forum is super long - over 800 posts - but these people (well, a good percentage of them) really know what they're talking about (kinda like the people here with respect to wakeboarding) and for the most part it looks like they don't believe her. Basically, I think it boils down to (1) she didn't have any independent observers; (2) she hasn't produced the data from the observer's logs that she said she would produce when questioned about the legitimacy of her swim; (3) there is a significant increase in her speed for about a 7 hour stretch in the middle of the night; (4) there doesn't seem to be any full length video of the swim; and (5) she doesn't have the best track record with respect to transparency regarding her past swims. Also, the fact that one of the guys on her team that swore the swim was done honestly was recently arrested for smuggling 600 plus pounds of cocaine into Florida doesn't help either. I was just curious whether any of you knew about the "hoax" theory and whether you think she did or did not really do the swim.
http://marathonswimmers.org/forum/di...-diana-nyad/p1
Threaded Mode