Nyad lies about being the first woman to swim around Manhattan... again

evmo

Saw this post on Diana Nyad's facebook page recently (h/t @ScottZornig)

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Nyad was not the first woman, of course. There were two six before her - including as far back as Ida Elionsky in 1916 and Amelia Gade in 1922.

The hilarious thing is.... she had already been confronted about this false claim, about 5 years ago. The blog post from 2011 where she acknowledges this is deleted from her site, but thanks to the Wayback Machine we can still read it:

http://web.archive.org/web/20110615012544/http://diananyad.com/history-rewritten…-to-my-great-surprise/

ssthomas

Barf, barf, barf. And more barf.

evmo

Trying to turn this in a more constructive direction..... anyone with a little internet know-how and spare time interested in finding old clippings about Ida Elionsky and Amelia Gade, and posting them here?

marlin

Check out the references on this Wikipedia link :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_Elionsky

"Girl Swims Around Manhattan Island". New York Times. June 27, 1921. Retrieved 2010-07-23. Miss Gade is said to be the second woman to accomplish the feat of swimming around Manhattan Island, Miss Ida Elionsky having done it in September, 1916, in 11 hours and 36 minutes, as compared to Miss Gade's time of 15 hours and 57 minutes.

ssthomas

evmo said:
Trying to turn this in a more constructive direction..... anyone with a little internet know-how and spare time interested in finding old clippings about Ida Elionsky and Amelia Gade, and posting them here?

Sorry, my barfing comments weren't constructive. I apologize. :-)

JustSwim

The link goes to NYC Swim site. I found this interesting piece of an article from a New Zealand newspaper about Ida and her brother's attempt to swim around Manhattan.

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/AS19161230.2.147.5

malinaka

Courtesy of WOWSA Huntington Beach, CA, here's the DNOWS timeline of Manhattan from 2010:
http://dailynews.openwaterswimming.com/2010/09/history-of-popular-manhattan-island.html?m=1

And here's a nice little article about Ida Elionsky and her brother circling The Island from The Sun, 25 Sep 1916:
http://nyshistoricnewspapers.org/lccn/sn83030431/1916-09-25/ed-1/seq-1/

By the way, 24 Sept 2016 will be Ida's 100 year MIMS-iversary!

suziedods

This just seems to me to be a calculated move ( again). She MUST be aware of the demise of NYCSwim.. and therefore feels that her claims will not be called out. Gawd, it just makes me tired. Tired of her, tired of fighting tired.
( Plus, uh. really.. you can't see the statue until you get MUCH further down, if I remember correctly)

evmo

Here's the text of DN's deleted blog post from 2011 (via the Internet Archive), where she acknowledges she actually wasn't the first.

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History Rewritten….to my GREAT Surprise!

Posted by admin on Jun 10, 2011 in Blog | 0 comments

When I swam around Manhattan Island on October 6, 1975, I read about my own achievement in The New York Times and other NY publications the next day.

The paper of record at the time declared that I had both broken the 50-year-old record, for both men and women, in circling the Big Apple in 7hrs, 57mins, AND that I had become the first woman ever to swim around the most famous island in the world.

That crisp, sunny, early autumn day was one of the highlights of my young life. I was 25 years old. Feisty. Thirsty for adventure. And gliding down the mighty Hudson, the George Washington Bridge historic above, the Statue of Liberty glistening at the Southern end, was adventure of the highest kind.

Many people took the day off work as they heard about my quest. They lined the sea walls and I waved back to them as they shouted encouragement and Bravo’s across the Hudson and East Rivers.

The athletic details of the day, being the fastest to date, and the first woman, weren’t of any great significance to me. It was much more about the inspiration of the moment. My family, going back to the early 1800’s were all from New York City. My grandparents, my mother, and I myself were all born in Manhattan. Not knowing much about my maternal grandfather, I discovered in my 20’s, while coaching at Barnard, that he (George Warrington Curtis) was not only captain of the Columbia University Swimming Team in his day but that he was also the first person ever to swim across the Long Island Sound.

I was in graduate school for Comparative Literature at NYU in 1975 and when I came back to school in the fall, after a summer on the world marathon swimming circuit, such as the annual swim across the Bay of Naples, from Capri to Naples, Italy, a friend asked if anyone had ever swum around Manhattan…..and why didn’t I do something inspired right here in my own back yard, instead of in foreign waters?

I checked with the Coast Guard as to the logistics and in planning with them, learned that in the early years of the 20th century, when the rivers of New York were much cleaner, there were men who did swim around the island. Women were never mentioned to me.

The day was planned. The day ensued. And it has always, always been the fondest memory of my former marathon swimming career. My heart still pounds when I fly into New York and the glorious expanse of the Hudson reminds me of that October 6, nearly 36 years ago.

So imagine my mind-boggling surprise, all these many years later, now that I am suddenly back in the marathon swimming world, preparing to swim from Cuba to Florida this summer, after not swimming a stroke since 1979, to hear that there were in fact one or maybe two or maybe even as many as half a dozen women who did swim around Manhattan back in the early days!!!!!

The history is unclear. The dissemination of accurate information has not followed an empirical path. I am waiting for the most reputable historians of the sport to dig further and publish their research as to their collective best versions as to who did in fact circle Manhattan, when and how.

We need to learn more about one Ida Elionsky who may have made it around in some 11 hours back in 1916. As reporting from a myriad of varying subjects is more sketchy from those days, compared to our modern times, there are odd details to the stories written about Ms. Elionsky’s swim. Details such as “she swam just 3 miles down the Hudson River, from 59th St to Houston Street, with her 265-pound brother on her back”!

We have some records about the success of one Amelia “Millie” Gade circling in 1921. And there are others who deserve research efforts, too.

After being recognized as the first woman to swim around Manhattan in both highly regarded press and swimming circles (no other than Gertrude Trudy Ederle entertained me in her home in Queens many times in the 1970’s, never recounting any of the stories of her women contemporaries of the 1920’s having swum around Manhattan), I am quite frankly stunned to hear now that this title is probably not mine to claim.

As a sports journalist and a feminist all my life, I take both joy and pride in honoring all great women athletes of all eras, but most especially those pioneers of early years who never found it easy to be strong, courageous, physical specimens in a male-dominated society.

I look forward to the unfolding of the true history of women swimming around Manhattan.

And, even though we don’t yet know the absolute truth as to that history, I hereby relinquish my title as the first woman. Nobody can ever take the glory of that day from me. And the title of fastest at the time still goes under my name. But for The First Woman, this honor belongs to others.

paulm

Evan- Maybe someone should post that link with the relevant background info to DN's facebook- ?

lakespray

malinaka said:
Courtesy of WOWSA Huntington Beach, CA, here's the DNOWS timeline of Manhattan from 2010:
http://dailynews.openwaterswimming.com/2010/09/history-of-popular-manhattan-island.html?m=1

And here's a nice little article about Ida Elionsky and her brother circling The Island from The Sun, 25 Sep 1916:
http://nyshistoricnewspapers.org/lccn/sn83030431/1916-09-25/ed-1/seq-1/

So I can't post internet links to Facebook very well on my phone. Can someone please paste these links on her Facebook post. I.E. if there was a lawsuit there should be a public record of that too.

evmo

Email correspondence posted with permission from Morty Berger, founder of NYC Swim and still the foremost authority on the history of Manhattan swims. Context: this was Morty's response to someone (specific name redacted) who was fact-checking DN's claims in her recent memoir.

Bold added for emphasis.

My apologies - there were not two women who swam around Manhattan before DN. There were six.

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From: Morty Berger [mailto:*****@nycswim.org] 
Sent: Wednesday, November 25, 2015 2:39 PM
To: [redacted]
Subject: RE: Who swam manhattan before 1928

Hi [redacted]:

Diana is once again incorrect. She did not contact me to fact check, especially disconcerting since I spoke to her by phone in 2011 after I reached out to CNN to fix her previous improper claims … At the time she claimed to be the first woman to swim around Manhattan…

I attached some support for the times prior to Diana, most are readily available..

We are the only ones who have the entire database of documented completed swims.

So this is what we have…

There have been 1,020 documented attempts; 871 documented successful individual completions. There could be a few circumnavigations that we have no record of, but I am fairly certain it would be less than 5 successful completions at this point.

The chart below are the documented successful circumnavigations, prior to Diana’s. The 1930 swim was a race and was filmed by NewsReel (Great footage and can
be purchased.

http://www.buyoutfootage.com/pages/titles/blacktype/pd_nr_titles/pd_newsreels30_007.html)

5 people finished the 1930 race; but there is not a complete list of who started the swim. Article attached.

The last documented successful swim prior to Diana’s was Diane Struble (of Lake George fame) in 1959. It was well covered in the day…

here is a video link…

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/mother-of-three-swims-round-manhattan/query/Diane

and article

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1350&dat=19590816&id=VJ1OAAAAIBAJ&sjid=5QAEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4236,2327572

Diana was the 15th documented person to complete the swim and the 7th documented female.

Prior to her swim, 6 women and 8 men are documented to have completed the swim.

She was the first documented under 8 hours .. there is some controversy if it was assisted or not (My interviews of her boat captain stated she touched/held onto the boat).

Of the 871 documented completions, Diana ranks 218 overall.
Of the 255 documented female completions, Diana ranks 79 overall.

Please note that the Manhattan swim is tidal; so the time does not always reflect the quality of the swimmer.

There is some controversy regarding Elionsky’s swim claim, but the remainder should be fairly solid.

Corson was not well documented (mentioned in articles well after the swim), but since she successfully swam the EC and it was observed, it seems to reason that her claim is reasonable to accept.

I am betting as more papers get digitized… something will appear to more fully support the claim.

Conrad Wennerberg (c 1974) did a solid job documenting the swims in his book, but he had quite a few BIG omissions.

The same can be said for Tim Johnson’s dense research as well.

1915	05-Sep-15	Dowling	Robert	M	New York, New York
1916		Elionsky	Ida	F	New York, New York
1921	26-Jun-21	Gade (Corson)	Amelia	F	Copenhagen, Denmark
1926	19-Sep-26	Moore(schoemell)	Charlotte	F	New York, New York
1927	18-Sep-27	Summers	Bryon	M	Alameda, California
1927	25-Sep-27	Sadlo	William	M	Bronx, New York
1928	01-Jul-28	Sadlo	William	M	Bronx, New York
1929	21-Jul-29	Garrick	Lillian	F	New York, New York
1930	27-Jul-30	Shields	Sam	M	Florida
1930	27-Jul-30	Sadlo	William	M	Bronx, New York
1930	27-Jul-30	Goll	William	M	New York, New York
1930	27-Jul-30	Zeggar	Paul	M	Farmington, Connecticut
1930	27-Jul-30	Priller (benoit)	Anne	F	Miami, Florida
1959	15-Aug-59	Struble	Diane	F	New York, New York

The current record for Manhattan is held by Oliver Wilkinson set in 2011 with a time of 5:44:02. Rondi Davies has the women’s record of 5:44:47 all set in 2011.

Below are a couple links of the many attempts to correct the record, so to speak about Diana’s claim.

• http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2010/06/29/diana-nyad-chases-a-dream/
• http://brucefrankel.net/index.php/site/comments/at_60_diana_nyad_waits_for_cuba_and_calm_seas_for_rematch_with_the_sea/

In 2011, I spoke with Diana directly about the claim and posted something to her blog acknowledging the faux pas.

Attached is the email thread referring to what she said she would post.... which she did.
The page is no longer available on her website... but the way back machine still has it.

https://web.archive.org/web/20110613145259/http://diananyad.com/history-rewritten…-to-my-great-surprise/

To be on the record about what she posted... I was not completely happy with, as it remained factually incorrect...

But I viewed it as progress.

Unfortunately, she has reverted in her recent book. This thread documents that she KNOWS she is fabricating the facts.

Best of luck!

evmo

Just in case anyone missed the best part of Morty's recap:

"there is some controversy if it [Nyad's 1975 swim around Manhattan] was assisted or not (My interviews of her boat captain stated she touched/held onto the boat)."

Munatones

Thank you very much for this historical background. I am adding this information on the swimmers and dates and times to Openwaterpedia. It is most helpful.

DanSimonelli

"The paper of record at the time declared that I had both broken the 50-year-old record, for both men and women, in circling the Big Apple in 7hrs, 57mins, AND that I had become the first woman ever to swim around the most famous island in the world."

How can one break "the 50-year-old record, for both men and women"
["AND"] be "the first woman"?!?!

:-?

IronMike

DanSimonelli said:
"The paper of record at the time declared that I had both broken the 50-year-old record, for both men and women, in circling the Big Apple in 7hrs, 57mins, AND that I had become the first woman ever to swim around the most famous island in the world."

How can one break "the 50-year-old record, for both men and women"
["AND"] be "the first woman"?!?!

:-?

She's the worst journalist ever. And that's saying a lot.

DanSimonelli

paulm said:
Evan- Maybe someone should post that link with the relevant background info to DN's facebook- ?

Paul, that won't go anywhere.
Best would be if many people post this thread link and others share...that's how things goes viral.

I just did!

https://www.facebook.com/dan.simonelli/posts/10210467812433629

DanSimonelli

I think this is equally telling of her m.o.!

"Unfortunately, she has reverted in her recent book. This thread documents that she KNOWS she is fabricating the facts."

b-(

IronMike

evmo said:
Just in case anyone missed the best part of Morty's recap:

"there is some controversy if it [Nyad's 1975 swim around Manhattan] was assisted or not (My interviews of her boat captain stated she touched/held onto the boat)."

Looks like holding on to the boat is a constant theme in her swimming.

JenA

Interestingly, Wind, Waves and Sunburn also documents that, in 1959, the NYTimes corrected the perception that Diane Struble was the first woman to swim Manhattan.

The original article should be accessible here:
http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1959/08/16/issue.html

Seems odd that the NYTimes would proclaim Diana Nyad (let's use her full name, no? Probably helps with the google juice?) the first woman to swim Manhattan, just 16 years later. It makes me wonder if Diana Nyad is correct in claiming that the NYTimes proclaimed her the first woman to complete.

Presumably, the article should be accessible here:
http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1975/10/06/issue.html

or here (the next day)
http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1975/10/07/issue.html

Anyone with a NYTimes subscription?

evmo

@JenA said: Seems odd that the NYTimes would proclaim Diana Nyad (let's use her full name, no? Probably helps with the google juice?) the first woman to swim Manhattan, just 16 years later. It makes me wonder if Diana Nyad is correct in claiming that the NYTimes proclaimed her the first woman to complete.
Anyone with a NYTimes subscription?

Good call, Jen! And you're right - the NYT does mention Diane Struble's 1959 swim!
Full article PDF here.

So it seems she made that part up too.

JenA

@evmo said: Full article PDF here.

Huh. "[Her feeds] were also aimed at keeping up her powerful, relentles stroke: 60 to the minute, 600 to the mile."

That's some funky math. 10 minutes is a mighty fast mile time, even with current assistance. Doing 28.5 miles at 10 minutes per mile would give you a 4h45 swim, not 7h57.

kimh

Her FB post at top also refers to "hundreds of people [...] cheering [her] on," and yet the NYT article says that "Except for a handful of workmen at various places along the route and the reporters who stayed nearby [...] Miss Nyad swam on alone" (also going on to say that she was "attempting to do what no woman had done before"-- huh?).

At least the article corroborates the "sunny" part...

JenA

@kimh said:
also going on to say that she was "attempting to do what no woman had done before"-- huh?).

Perhaps it meant setting the fastest-swim (beat the boys?) record, which she then went on to claim?

This is starting to feel like one of those spot-the-differences puzzles in the paper where you compare two seemingly identical pictures. Go on then, folks! Who else can spot one?

suziedods

She wore TWO CAPS! 'And sometimes I wear a woolen one '
WTF? It was 65F.
I just can't take it any more.

jvj

The next DN in training?

http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/uttar-pradesh-child-panel-order-probe-shraddha-shukla-swimmer-vinod-kapri-filmmaker-case-using-boat-3015516/

Eric

Article copied below.

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Is a 12-year-old swimming 570 km? Uttar Pradesh child panel orders probe

Filmmaker claims girl mostly travels on boat; father says she wants to go to Olympics.

Written by Manish Sahu | Lucknow | Updated: September 6, 2016 5:12 am

THE UTTAR Pradesh State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (UPSCPCR) has ordered a probe into the alleged violation of rights of a 12-year-old girl, who is currently swimming from Kanpur to Varanasi — a distance of 570 km.

The girl, Shraddha Shukla, had started swimming in Ganga on August 28 at 11.10 am and is set to reach Varanasi on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, a Mumbai-based documentary filmmaker, Vinod Kapri, has lodged a complaint with the police in Mirzapur district on Saturday accusing the girl’s father, Lalit Shukla, of threatening him. Kapri, who has filmed the girl for seven days, has claimed that Shukla had misbehaved with him when he questioned why Shraddha was covering most of the distance on a boat.

Lalit too had lodged a cross complaint against Kapri. Police have provided both security till they leave Mirzapur.

UPSCPCR chairperson Juhie Singh said: “I have sent a letter to the Kanpur district magistrate on Sunday, soon after a member of the commission in the city informed me about the controversy. I have asked the DM to inquire into all aspects, including whether the father was violating child rights.” When contacted, Kanpur DM Kaushal Raj Sharma said, “I have handed over the probe to the additional city magistrate.”
Lalit, a contractor from Kanpur, said Shraddha herself took up the challenge and intended to swim around 70 km every day. In 2014, she had swam from Kanpur to Allahabad covering 280 km, he claimed.

“We had prepared for the tour for the last two months. We had requested our relatives, friends and some private divers to help her in the exercise. We have also arranged for a doctor, who is our family friend, to attend to her,” said Lalit, adding that the motive for the tour was to spread message of ‘Clean Ganga’ and also to check the girl’s capacity as she wanted to represent India in the Olympics.

During her tour, Shraddha was accompanied by Lalit, uncle Mahesh Shukla and six private divers on two boats. Women and elderly relatives travelled along with them in a SUV.

“A net has been thrown between two boats to ensure that Shraddha does not go deep. After every 15 to 20 km, we stop our boats and pull her out of the water. We apply cream on her body and give her something to eat. We have made eight night halts before we reached Mirzapur on Sunday,” Lalit said, adding that Shraddha had started swimming at the age of three.

Asked about dispute between him and Kapri, Lalit claimed the filmmaker was shooting without entering into an agreement with him.

“When I asked him to stop and complete formalities, he threatened me and demanded Rs 2 lakh, which he had spent so far on the shooting,” he alleged.

Kapri, on the other hand, claimed that he had called up Lalit after he came to know that a 12-year-old girl was swimming from Kanpur to Varanasi. “For two days, I, along with three of my associates, travelled on Lalit Shukla’s boat. We found that most of the time, the girl travelled in the boat instead of swimming. She used to swim before they approached a ghat or when there are people around. She used to spend rest of the time on the boat,” he said.

Claiming that Lalit got irritated when he was questioned, Kapri said he soon hired a motor boat for himself and his team. On Saturday, while waiting near Vindhychal ghat in Mirzapur, Kapri said he spotted Lalit’s boats and started filming. “As we approached them, we found the girl sitting in the boat with her father and shot a video. Soon, Shukla started hurling abuses and issued life threats,” he added.

danslos

I've recently been doing a bit of research into DN's various claims. In her 1978 memoir, OTHER SHORES, I just came across this:

The first man ever to [swim around Manhattan] was Robert W. Dowling...on September 5, 1915.... One year later to the day the first woman completed the circuit. Ida Elionsky's time was a very respectable 11 hours, 35 minutes. There were others who made the swim...., but I will simply mention the male and female record holders. Diane Struble plunged into the Battery waters on August 15, 1959, and reached her original starting point in 11 hours, 21 minutes. (p. 57)

I had expected to find her making the "I was first" claim, so I was beyond flabbergasted. She has obviously known the truth from day one. I suppose that I shouldn't have been surprised.

DanSimonelli

Good find @danslos

I "expect" you'll find many more... 8-|

danslos

For those keeping score, just found this. Four minutes into the 2012 short "Diana: A Documentary," DN says:

...[M]y teens and twenties, I was a world champion swimmer and held a number of world records, in the ocean particularly—first woman to swim around Manhattan Island, you know, and that sort of thing.

That's the earliest post-recant un-recant that I've found so far.

danslos

Just ran into another "first woman" claim from a few months earlier than "Diana: A Documentary." In "The Hunger: Swimming from Cuba to Florida," an article dated May 25, 2012, in Elle magazine, the author writes:

Diana decided to try swimming around Manhattan [in 1975]. This had been done a few decades earlier by men but never by a woman.

So the gap between recant and un-recant is now less than a year.

Does anyone know how soon after 1975 DN started saying she was first? The oldest statement I've found is in a radio transcript from 2007:

...[I]n 1975, I found that not only had Gertrude Ederle never swum around Manhattan. No other woman had done it, either.... I was determined to be the first.

danslos

In an interview from what appears to be around the time of the Facebook post that begins this thread, DN declares that...

There are a couple who are haters who are still out there. They think I'm [a] total fraud, that I didn't do anything I said. I didn't swim around Manhattan Island. I didn't swim from Cuba to Florida. And if that's the way they want to spend their lives ­ you know, what a waste.

Pretty fascinating stuff. She's obviously aware of folks disputing her Manhattan claims, but she embellishes them in an apparent attempt to make her skeptics look as bad as possible. I don't know of anyone claiming that she never swam around Manhattan, only that she wasn't first and that she may not have completed it legitimately.

Here's the whole bit:

Interviewer: How did you feel about the naysayers, the critics, the "bad­mouthers" who came out after all that?

DN: It hurt. I won't pretend it didn't. I tried to stay classy about it and not act all pissed off. On the one hand, most of them ­ upwards of 95 percent ­ were just respectful people that come from the world of marathon swimming. And they had the right to ask the vetting questions. After all, we are in what you might call "the Lance Armstrong era" so that almost any record is like ­ did she take steroids? Did she cheat in some way? How could she have done this impossible thing?

So my navigator John Bartlett and I and a few members of the team got on a long, marathon phone call with all those people. John Bartlett got out his electronic devices that measured the GPS tracking and proved, every eighth of a mile, where we were at that moment. Almost every single one of them said, I hope you don't mind but we had to ask that. There are a couple who are haters who are still out there. They think I'm total fraud, that I didn't do anything I said. I didn't swim around Manhattan Island. I didn't swim from Cuba to Florida. And if that's the way they want to spend their lives ­ you know, what a waste.

-Daniel,
tryin' hard to stay classy

DanSimonelli

It's just a matter of time...
Keep going @danslos
=D>

tortuga

So it seems apparent that DN is not mentally rational for whatever reason. What infuriates me is the lack of journalistic integrity that continues to support the bogus claims of a whackadoodle.

Jbetley

Whackadoodle! You learn something new every day!!,

danslos

Just stumbled upon a tasty morsel that, though not directly related to the Manhattan swim, speaks to public credulity towards Nyad. And it comes to us via WikiLeaks.

Nyad had trouble getting US government clearance for her 2010 Cuba-Florida attempt. So she sought out a friend, lobbyist Hilary Rosen, who knew then-Secretary of State Clinton. Clinton ultimately helped get Nyad cleared. In the initial email, Rosen writes:

HRC:
You may remember many years ago when olympic champion swimmer diana nyad tried to swim from cuba to florida and failed. Diana wants to try again...

You can read the whole exchange here: "A UNIQUE REQUEST FOR YOUR HELP FROM HILARY ROSEN."

(Nyad, by the way, was only one of Secretary Clinton's multiple aquatic concerns that WikiLeaks brought to the surface. See also "Hillary Clinton's Fight for Gefilte Fish," etc.)