While Diana Nyad continues to celebrate her record-setting 110-mile swim from Cuba to Florida, others are busy debating the validity of her accomplishment.
The 64-year-old, who completed the swim without the aid of shark protection, has become controversial after some felt that she may have received aid from a boat accompanying her.
Attention to the legitimacy of the swim first came about on marathonswimmers.org. The page now has an entire section solely for people to discuss Nyad.
The other issue with the swim comes from something called the English Channel rules, which state that Nyad violated a rule when she wore a suit designed to protect swimmers from jellyfish.
Although the suit is against this rule, it actually is heavier than a typical suit and weighed Nyad down during the swim.
“It is the only way,” Nyad said in a press conference with NBC defending the swim. “The swim requires it. I don’t mean to fly in the face of your rules, but for my own life’s safety, a literal life-and-death measure, that’s the way we did it.”
Even though it seems that the suit would make Nyad slower during the swim, data collected from a GPS tracker shows otherwise.
The data reveals that Nyad had an increase of speed during times where she should have been at some of her lowest stamina points.
For almost the entire swim, Nyad was swimming at a speed around 1.5 miles per hour. After about 27 hours of swimming, Nyad suddenly had a spike in speed and was swimming at about 3 mph.
Critics of Nyad point out that going 3 mph at anytime would be very difficult, let alone doing it near the end of the journey. But Nyad’s camp said that her increase in speed was due to a strong current as she approached Key West.
According to a study done by suite101.com, Frederick Bousquet swam a then-world record 50 meter freestyle in 20.94 seconds in April 2009. His pace during the swim was at about 5.34 mph.
Britta Steffen swam her current record 50 meter freestyle in 23.73 seconds in August 2009, which gave her an average speed of 4.71 mph, according to suite101.com.
The same study shows that British swimmer Rebecca Adlington swam the 800 meter freestyle in a then-world record time of 8 minutes 14.1 seconds, good for an average speed of 3.62 mph.
For Nyad to be swimming at a pace of 3 mph, she would be going less than 1 mph slower than the average speed a world record holder did in the second longest Olympic swimming event.
“Swimming at 3 mph would put you at a pace of a 20-minute mile,” Buchholz High School assistant swimming Coach Albert Monge said. “Your average high school competitive swimmer probably swims around a 19 minute mile. So, a 20-minute mile is possible, but not probable.”
The typical maximum speed of the Gulf Stream is about 5.6 mph and the average current usually flows at about 4 mph, according to oceanservice.noaa.gov.
The Gulf Stream does flow past Florida but for Nyad to be heavily aided by the current, it would rely on her happening to be swimming with the current and for it to be a particularly strong current.
Nyad’s swim is being sent to Guinness to review whether or not she actually set the record.
Follow RJ Schaffer on Twitter @rjschaffer.
