Just Keep Swimming

One of the most confusing things about being a sports fan is figuring out when we are supposed to praise individual athletic achievement versus when all credit needs to be given to the team. Media pundits are always heaping love down on the guys who are seen as unselfish about putting their team first while simultaneously vilifying anyone who appears to be trying to grab more than their fair share of the spotlight. If we stuck with that narrative all the time that would be ok, except there are other times when we love the 'look-at-me' athletes. For example, every tennis star of the late 70s was a whiny brat who threw tantrums at every call which went against them and I want to punch in them face if I so much as see a replay of it on ESPN Classic. Yet many of them are still clinging to fame today because of those same outbursts. You could make the case it has to do with team sports versus individual ones, only that same standard doesn't apply to a sport like golf, where a person acting like John McEnroe would be banned from the sport by the 15th tee. It really send a mixed message. And that individual adoration ratchets up the stranger the task they manage to pull off. That is why I was hardly surprised yesterday afternoon when all anyone wanted to talk about was the news that 64 year-old Diana Nyad swam 110 miles from Cuba to Key West, Florida without a shark cage.

Now, before we go any further I want to make it abundantly clear that no matter what you may infer from my comments, I do not want you to think I am trying to diminish Nyad's achievement. She was in the water for 53 hours and couldn't take a break on the support boat because that would have nullified her attempt. Staying awake for that long would have been impressive enough for me but I've always felt like constantly taking in calories is the way to push through being exhausted and the only thing she had to eat during the entire swim was a protein paste she had to eat through a tube. On top of that she couldn't even make the swim using flippers or else it wouldn't have counted. And just because she hadn't made it challenging enough Nyad was wearing a special suit which protected her from jellyfish but also weighed her down, slowing her progress. And the fact that the news media kept reminding us that she was the first person do to this without a shark cage sends the very clear message that the shark cage is usually necessary for a very good reason. This was no causal night by the pool. Showing just how hard this was, the swim was her 5th attempt to make the journey and even after she reached Florida she got sick from all the saltwater she swallowed during the crossing. It was an incredible moment in personal perseverance and something I know I would never be able to accomplish in my wildest dreams. But none of that answers the very obvious question of just why she felt the need to do this.

When I first heard about this I assumed it had to do with the US trade embargo against Cuba or perhaps it was a stand against immigration (I doubt I am the first person to say this, but I don't believe Nyad is actually the first person to make this swim, she is just the first to do it publicly). But, I didn't hear a word about either of those issues in the post-swim interview. Nyad herself hasn't really offered up a solid reason, saying she just enjoys pushing herself. That's all well and good (there is actually something rather refreshing about knowing she is doing this without a political agenda), but there are plenty of ways to push yourself which don't involve hiring a crew and a support boat. From all the reports I read she wasn't even doing this to raise money for research to fight a disease or one of the normal reasons people feel the need to push their body to the breaking point (though she now plans to do pool-based endurance swims to raise money for various tragedies such as Hurricane Sandy, the tornadoes in Oklahoma and the Marathon bombings). I'm sure those charities would appreciate the money but since I have never heard of a single charity refusing to take money unless it was collected during an insane test of the limits of humanity, she could just as easily hold a bake sale and not worry about dying.

Of course, Nyad is hardly the first person to do something stupid just to be able to say she has done it. I'm pretty sure that basic human instinct to do things no one else has done is how the entire sport of mountain-climbing continues to exist. Still, I just wonder how many more of these stunts humanity has left in them because at some point we're just going to run out of possible stunts. We've already reached the highest peak on the globe and doing that has become so commonplace a few months ago I was telling you about a couple of guys in their 80s who have reached the summit of Mount Everest multiple times and are now competing to see which one of them will be the oldest one to pull it off, a competition which probably won't end until one of them dies. I'm not saying making this swim is going to become something people do during their mid-life crisis but I do worry we will reach a point when it stops being about whether a person can make this swim and starts becoming about how fast they can do it. When it stops becoming about how hard something is and starts becoming about how fast you can get it over with (this is where I point out none of those speeds will ever be as fast as it could be done it a boat) a challenge loses its importance. Still, I think Nyad should get credit for getting us to talk about swimming in a non-Summer Olympic year, which is something not even Michael Phelps can pull off.