Diana Nyad Fact Check

10/04/2024

Time for another round of “Which One Doesn’t Belong?”

Diana Nyad will speak at the Pennsylvania Conference for Women early next month. Other speakers include Joyce Abbott, the educator who inspired the TV show Abbott Elementary; actor Sheryl Lee Ralph, who won an Emmy for her role in the show; and basketball maestro Dawn Staley, who earned five Olympic gold medals as a player, one as a coach, and most recently led her University of South Carolina Gamecocks to a 38–0 season and the national title.

Don’t let the presence of a convicted felon sway your vote, at least not in this contest. Martha Stewart paid her debt to society.
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“Which One Doesn’t Belong?” won’t work for the Daytime Beauty Awards, where Diana and Bonnie received the Achievement in Health & Fitness award. Others receiving honors at the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles on Monday included:

• A plastic surgeon.
• A liposuction expert.
• A purveyor of celebrity-endorsed menopause supplements of dubious efficacy.*

If you’ve heard of Daytime Beauty Awards’ founder and erstwhile PR representative Michele Elyzabeth, it’s probably because, for a short time beginning in 2007, she repped Heather Mills, Paul McCartney’s ex-wife.

Elyzabeth and Mills had a public falling out just over a year later. “‘Impossible’ Heather Mills dumped by ANOTHER publicist,” shouted one tabloid headline. Another gave some detail: “‘Heather Mills is a bitch who tricked me into spreading lies about Paul McCartney,’ claims her ex-Hollywood PR.”

Crisis PR consultant Mark Borkowski wrote at the time that Elyzabeth had committed “probably the most heinous crime that any publicist can ever commit”: She ratted out a client.

Lawsuits followed. Elyzabeth sued Mills for unpaid fees, lost the suit, appealed, and lost again. Then Mills sued Elyzabeth. They settled out of court in 2016.

Much about Comtesse Michele Elyzabeth oozes deception — including her name (she also goes by Michele Blanchard), her title, her resume, and her French accent.

All of which is to say that Diana was likely not the only charlatan at the DBAs.
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*The New Yorker’s food writer Hannah Goldfield addresses Southern Californians’ obsession with “wellness” in the magazine’s latest issue. In “A Food Critic Walks Into A Fasting Spa: How Southern California became the epicenter of hype diets and twenty-dollar smoothies,” a health-and-wellness coach tells Goldfield about a recent revelation: “I really started to think more about my colon than my cellulite.” A woman Goldfield encounters at the celebrity-touted We Care Spa, which specializes in fasting and colonics, explains why Californians are so concerned with wellness: “It’s because we’re light-years ahead of everyone else, because we follow our intuition. Higher intellect.”

09/17/2024

DN TO NOTCH ANOTHER HOF

The Broward Education Foundation will induct Diana Nyad into its Sports Hall of Fame on October 18 at the Margaritaville Hollywood Beach Resort: https://tinyurl.com/bef-hof

The board of directors and two staff members got emails from me this morning. If you feel moved to join me, here are their addresses: https://tinyurl.com/bef-adds

09/10/2024

"Never Ever Give Up: How Diana Nyad Swam from Cuba to Florida," from the BBC World Service's podcast Lives Less Ordinary (LLO), may have contained more misinformation and lies than any other Nyad-related podcast episode.

LLO's sister podcast Outlook also recently aired a brief DN segment. Not as much time for BS, but the presenter says Nyad swam the English Channel, so that'll do.

I wrote to the general program email address yesterday, not expecting to hear back. However, this morning, I received a brief, provocative, and infuriating message from one of the producers. message from one of the producers.

The post I had prepared will have to wait.

LLO: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0jmmhwz
Outlook: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct6996

09/02/2024

THE FARCE THAT LAUNCHED A THOUSAND SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS ET AL.

Today's the 11th anniversary of Diana Nyad's "swim." I just posted about it at the Diana Nyad Fact Check Annex. I've pasted the text below, but the post has more images and lots of links: https://nyadfactcheck.com/annex/time-to-celebrate-another-anniversary-of-diana-nyads-unproven-crossing/
. .

Eleven years ago today, Diana Nyad walked ashore in Key West to complete the farce that launched a thousand speaking engagements, along with a memoir, a biopic, and boundless adulation for marathon swimming’s most successful liar.

Today is also the first anniversary (plus two days) of Evan Morrison’s announcement that he had changed his mind about Nyad’s “swim,” and it was “time to move on.”

On multiple occasions since then, Morrison, co-founder and head of the Marathon Swimmers Federation (MSF), has said that he has loads of new data that will prove Nyad completed the crossing under her own power. “I am compiling documentation,” he wrote on Facebook last October, “including items that have not previously been published. It’s a massive amount of material. When I am done, I will publish it to the MSF website, just as I’ve done for hundreds of other swims over the years.”

He later deleted that comment. However, he left at least two others that mention oodles of new info. He has yet to reveal a single oodle.

After Nyad’s crossing, she, too, promised to release documentation. When she hadn’t after three months, Morrison wrote that Nyad “utterly lacks credibility. I’m not sure what more there is to discuss.”

I know how he feels. If proof existed, Nyad would have released it years ago. So, the only thing left to discuss is how to officially declare Nyad’s crossing a fraud.

08/28/2024

"Among the allegations against him: Munatones faked the existence of a sanctioning organization to lend credibility to Nyad's controversial Cuba-to-Florida swim, and digitally defiled a marathon swimming database in a brazen attempt to rewrite the sport’s history in Nyad's favor."

Diana Nyad is one of the greatest swimmers America ever produced. Just ask her, or see Nyad, the mythmaking, Oscar-nominated biopic built around her 2013 Cuba-to-Florida swim. But lots of folks in the open-water swimming realm prefer to see her as one of this sportsworld’s biggest frauds, and, as ...

08/22/2024

Last Friday, the World Open Water Swimming Association's director filed a complaint against Steven Munatones, et al, for, among other things, breaking the terms of the WOWSA Dissolution Agreement he signed in May.

I just posted a summary of the complaint on the Diana Nyad Fact Check Annex. (DN's not a defendant in the suit, but she does play a part in the complaint.)
https://nyadfactcheck.com/annex/wowsa-director-sues-steven-munatones-and-others/

08/21/2024

Just posted to the Diana Nyad Fact Check Annex: "You Can Forget Diana Nyad, But Please Remember Rebecca Morris," a sort of follow-up to the last post, which includes a section about Morris's article, "Challengers of the Channel."
https://nyadfactcheck.com/annex/why-we-will-never-forget-rebecca-morris/

(Image of the Good Humor ice cream truck in Washington D.C., May 1942. Photo by John Ferrell via the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2017764332/.)

08/15/2024

Next month, the KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau / Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site will hold a commemoration for Yolande Beekman, Madeleine Damerment, Noor Inayat Khan, and Eliane Plewman, the four British Intelligence agents executed at the camp on September 13, 1944.

I wrote a bit about them after a reader criticized my calling Dachau a men's camp (on the page about Nyad's Holocaust survivor tale).

https://www.kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de/veranstaltungen/gedenkveranstaltung-fuer-die-soe-agentinnen-yolande-beekman-madeleine-damerment-noor-inayat-khan-eliane-plewman/

https://nyadfactcheck.com/details_holocaust.html -note1

07/25/2024

This article about Diana Nyad was much better and much worse than I expected.

"In my pregnant, hypervigilant state," Shapton writes, "she struck me as batsh*t."

Shapton got that part right.

(Requires subscription, but you can get one article free if you register.)

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2024/08/15/crossing-to-safety-find-a-way-diana-nyad/

During her thousands of hours of training and her marathon open-water crossings, the American swimmer Diana Nyad sang songs in her head. She did this to

07/19/2024

New post to the Diana Nyad Fact Check Annex

The Gertrude Ederle biopic, "Young Woman and the Sea," begins streaming today. Some reviewers have suggested there are similarities between Ederle and the subject of another recent marathon swimming film. Beyond their gender and a sport, there aren't any.

https://nyadfactcheck.com/annex/gertrude-ederle-and-diana-nyad-are-both-women-swimmers-whose-biopics-premiered-a-few-months-apart-their-similarities-end-there/

Gertrude Ederle and Diana Nyad are both women swimmers whose biopics premiered a few months apart. Their similarities end there.

07/16/2024

New post to the Nyad Fact Check Annex: The Purist, a Long-Island-based magazine, interviewed Diana Nyad about her upcoming Authors Night appearance in East Hampton. She lied, of course, but more interesting is what she ignored.

Nyad will bring Find a Way, her "epic personality, " and her lies to East Hampton Library's Authors Night on August 10, 2024.

07/11/2024

"Young Woman and the Sea" begins streaming on Disney+ July 19. [Insert snarky comment about that other marathon swimmer biopic here.]

'Young Woman and the Sea' has locked its streaming premiere date on Disney+ after hitting theaters in limited release in May.

06/28/2024

Diana Nyad is a master of the false equivalency. To paraphrase legendary swim coach and English Channel swimmer James "Doc" Counsilman, "she's a mediocre author [and a fraud — Ed.] with a very good publicist."

Nyad will appear in East Hampton, New York, on August 10.

https://authorsnight.org/

06/03/2024

Headlines from two Los Angeles Times movie articles. One appeared today, the other last September.

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2024-05-31/young-woman-and-the-sea-review-daisy-ridley-trudy-ederle-english-channel

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2023-08-30/diana-nyad-netflix-biopic-accomplishments-exaggerations

05/14/2024

New post to the Diana Nyad Fact Check Annex: “Diana Nyad’s Magic Marker,” a close examination of her Florida State Historical Marker’s text. The analysis shows, among other things, how Diana turned a 60-mile, current-aided crossing into a 102.5-mile world record, and how she trained for open water swimming years before knowing the sport existed. Magic!
https://nyadfactcheck.com/annex/diana-nyads-not-so-magic-marker/

04/26/2024

Lots of amazing people on this list. Thankfully, one bad apple . . .
https://www.curvemag.com/articles/curve-power-list-50-lgbtq-women-and-nonbinary-trailblazers/

04/22/2024

SOMETHING’S FISHY ABOUT DIANA NYAD’S HISTORICAL MARKER

When I posted about the Marker earlier this month, I wrote that the Fort Lauderdale City Commission “unanimously approved the Historical Marker.”

I was wrong. Maybe.

Before Nyad’s fans spoke at the Commission meeting, Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis said the Commissioners were considering a resolution “authorizing a State Historic Marker…to honor marathon swimmer Diana Nyad,” as per the agenda memo (see links below).

But I missed this bit: When the City Clerk read the full resolution before the vote, it became:

“A resolution authorizing . . . the proper city officials to submit an application to Florida’s Division of Historical Resources” for the Marker.

I was glad to know the Marker wasn’t a done deal and that the Marker Council's three members — a history professor, an anthropology professor, and a working archeologist — still had a say. With the help of a friend, I put together a message explaining why Nyad doesn’t deserve a Historical Marker.

Two hours after sending it to the Council members, I received the following:

“The decision regarding the award of a Marker for this application has been removed from this Council. We appreciate your providing the State Division of Historic Resources with your position. This appointed Council will no longer be responsible for the determination of award for this application for a Historic Marker.”

I asked who’s now responsible. No reply.

So, as of today, the only thing I know about the Marker is this: If it gets approved or is already approved, everything on it will be either untrue, tainted by Nyad’s lies, or both.

There’s much more to this story. I hope to have something to post by the end of the week.

LINKS:
Nyad with three of Fort Lauderdale’s five City Commissioners at the Stonewall Gala just over a month before the Marker vote:
https://hotspotsmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Stonewall-Gala-2024-at-The-Venue74.jpg (From left to right: Warren Sturman, Steven Glassman, Diana Nyad, Dean Trantalis. Via HotSpots Magazine.)

Agenda memo:
https://nyadfactcheck.com/marker/2024.04.02.historical-marker-agenda-memo.pdf

Complete resolution:
https://nyadfactcheck.com/marker/2024.04.02.complete-resolution.pdf