Endurance swimmer Diana Nyad tackles perilous Straits of Florida at 61
Baku, August 8 (AZERTAC). Endurance swimmer Diana Nyad has plunged into the Straits of Florida for the start of what she hopes will be a world record 103-mile swim from Cuba to Florida.
She says the trip across the Florida Straits will take about 65 hours, if she gets good conditions. She also wants her effort to help US relations with Cuba.
She retired from swimming and took up sports journalism more than 30 years ago.
In her heyday, she set several world records, including swimming around Manhattan in 1975 in less than eight hours and a 102.5 mile swim from Bimini to Florida in 1979.
She has until the end of October to dive in or will face having to wait until June.
Australian Susan Maroney swam the Straits in 1997 aged 22 but she used a shark cage, which Ms Nyad believes helps calm the waves. Maroney was only 22, but Nyad said her comparatively advanced age is one of the reasons she will try the swim.
“I retired when I should have, when I was young, and a couple of years ago turning 60 I didn`t want to feel old yet. I started thinking what if I went back, what if I went back to the elusive dream of Cuba,” she said.
“I started training and found it was in my heart and in my body,” she said. She hopes the swim will help people her age and older realise they still can accomplish many things.
“I want to be there to say we have many, many years of vitality and strength and service left in us,” she said.
Weather forecasters had predicted doldrum-like conditions until Thursday in the straits that separate the United States and Cuba, giving her a good window for the grueling voyage.
Nyad tried the crossing from Cuba in 1978 when she was 28, but failed in the face of winds and heavy waves.
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