{"id":314619,"date":"2024-12-10T16:07:36","date_gmt":"2024-12-10T21:07:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=314619"},"modified":"2024-12-10T16:16:16","modified_gmt":"2024-12-10T21:16:16","slug":"nymphs-also-take-a-look-in-the-mirror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/cuba-usa\/nymphs-also-take-a-look-in-the-mirror\/","title":{"rendered":"Nymphs also take a look in the mirror"},"content":{"rendered":"

Diana Nyad stops dead at the entrance to the room where the journalists are waiting for her. Will she run away? Not at all. She simply retraces her steps in search of a mirror to touch up her Rod Stewart-style haircut. The spotless, translucent windows of the Hotel Nacional provide the service. She responds to <\/span>OnCuba<\/b>\u2019s \u201cYou look fantastic!\u201d with a smile and raises her arms with her fists closed and says \u201cArriba, arriba!\u201d in a fun-way, Cuban Spanish.<\/span><\/p>\n

For those who don\u2019t know her, Nyad looks like a rock star about to go on stage in an ecstatic stadium. With an impeccable suit of jacket and trousers, her polka dot trainers, her slim shoulders and her youthful air, she is very far from the showy body of many swimmers. She is 75 years old and an old age kidnapped by gyms, diets, good humor and willpower, which has never been lacking in her life and which Nietzsche would have taken inspiration from.<\/span><\/p>\n

If we have to look for proof that a surname can determine someone\u2019s destiny, the example of this woman born in New York on August 22, 1949 may be unbeatable. The world legend of open water swimming, who at 64 was able to swim \u2014 without holding on to anything other than her passionate faith \u2014 177 kilometers in a stormy sea, infested with sharks and jellyfish, is called Nyad, which in Greek means…water nymph.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Trainer and friend Bonnie Stoll. Photo: Otmaro Rodr\u00edguez.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Cuba<\/h3>\n

\u201cLove!\u201d said Bonnie Stoll, Diana Nyad\u2019s inseparable companion and trainer for 45 years, when asked about the reasons they had for traveling to the island, during a talk in the Havana Blues room with the press accredited to the 45th International New Latin American Film Festival.<\/span><\/p>\n

Born in 1952, Bonnie Sue Stoll is also an athlete, businesswoman and running physiologist. Together with her friend Nyad, she founded Everwalk, a national women\u2019s walking and health initiative.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a beautiful country, but there is also a divide that we would like to overcome,\u201d added Stoll.<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to having worked as a trainer for celebrities and professional athletes, she is an excellent professional racquetball player and was ranked third in the world in 1984. Furthermore, she is a photographer and art collector.<\/span><\/p>\n

Stoll and Nyad met for the first time at the Stamford Racquetball Club, where Stoll was head professional instructor. Their friendship led them to create an athletic training company called BravaBody, which included fitness videos and tutorials.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nyad says that \u201cCuba is very deep in our hearts, its people are the kindest in the world,\u201d she says in Spanish, a language she learns every day, while writing texts for children and inviting them to pursue their dreams, no matter how unrealizable they may seem.<\/span><\/p>\n

The former swimmer, who rose to fame in 1975 when she swam around the island of Manhattan, adds that the film <\/span>Nyad<\/span><\/i>, shown this Saturday in the 23 y 12 movie theater, was the official reason for her stay in Havana, but \u201cwe want to visit Cuba every year. We are here, above all, because this is our favorite place in the world for the warmth of the people, its streets, its people,\u201d emphasizes the New Yorker, in whose house she has \u201c<\/span>a room full of images of Cuba<\/a>, including one of Che Guevara.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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U.S. swimmer Diana Nyad (center) arrives, after 52 hours in the water, from Havana to the coast of Key West in Florida on September 2, 2013. Photo: Gast\u00f3n De C\u00e1rdenas EFE Zuma Press.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

35 years. From the first attempt to consecration<\/h3>\n

In 1978, in the middle of the Cold War, when she was 28 years old, Diana attracted the spotlight to the communist island.<\/span><\/p>\n

Havana and Washington had entered into a channel of dialogue through the opening of the interest sections in both capitals under the umbrella of Swiss diplomacy.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was then that the athlete tried for the first time to cross the Straits of Florida from Cuba. She swam in a steel cage to protect herself from sharks for approximately 42 hours before abandoning the test.<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps as an act of reparation, a year later she swam 164 kilometers from Bimini, Bahamas, to Florida in 27.5 hours, setting a record for distance in open waters.<\/span><\/p>\n

In an incredible story of perseverance, self-affirmation and getting even, the athlete, who for decades dedicated herself to sports journalism, took up again in 2011 the project of crossing the Florida Channel when she was 62 years old, because \u2014 she emphasizes \u2014 \u201cit is not the English Channel, nor the Strait of Japan, but that strait that separates Cuba from the United States,\u201d with all its tragic history of rafters and pirate attacks.<\/span><\/p>\n

After four failed attempts (one of them had to be aborted after 29 hours due to the waves and an asthma attack; another, because a jellyfish stung her on the forearm and neck, causing severe breathing difficulties), Nyad finally swam a total of 111 miles (177 kilometers) between Havana and Smathers Beach, in Key West, in 2013, and became the first person to cross the Straits of Florida without a shark cage.<\/span><\/p>\n

Controversies<\/h3>\n

At that time, her calendar marked 64 years and to this day, the World Open Water Swimming Association (WOWSA) does not recognize the validity of the record, while the Guinness World Records Registry also revoked its recognition due to suspicions by some of its members regarding the improbability that the swimmer did not use some object to rest during the difficult crossing.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, the Open Water Swimmers Federation backed Nyad and said there was no evidence she had committed fraud.<\/span><\/p>\n

The team that accompanied her was made up of two experts in repelling sharks without using a cage, but with a system of beeps that scare them away; a doctor specializing in marine creatures who helped Diana protect herself from the deadly jellyfish in the area; a doctor specializing in elite athletes; the captain of the boat; the navigator John Bartlett, in charge of ensuring that the athlete did not get into adverse currents while swimming; and the inseparable Bonnie Stoll.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2014, the Cuban government awarded Nyad the Order of Sports Merit to honor the athlete\u2019s virtues.<\/span><\/p>\n

Songs by Janis Joplin and counting in several languages<\/h3>\n

How was the recovery of your physical abilities to face the adventure of crossing the Straits after more than thirty years of the first attempt, which for anyone would have been foolish?<\/b><\/p>\n

I trained a lot for this second attempt, but for the type of sport I practice, which is swimming, specific exercises are needed. So, the first two months were very difficult, but then with a lot of training, with Bonnie, of course, helping me, I finally managed to get into that body condition that I needed.<\/span><\/p>\n

We first went to Mexico to practice, but the water was very cold, even though I did my routines. Then we traveled to the island of Saint Martin, where the Caribbean water is a little warmer and where there are no jellyfish, which are a danger I always face in this type of sport.<\/span><\/p>\n

My attempts before achieving the crossing in 2013 were prevented by the weather conditions, not by my physical condition.<\/span><\/p>\n

Was there some kind of constant, obsessive thought when you were covering that distance between Cuba and the United States? Did you repeat some mantra to yourself to achieve the goal?<\/b><\/p>\n

Imagine sitting in that chair where you are and only having the opportunity to eat something or other and to go to the bathroom, for 53 hours. You\u2019re not going to have a TV set, you\u2019re not going to have any form of entertainment. That\u2019s especially true when you\u2019re swimming: there are going to be a lot of thoughts going through your head, and it takes a lot of discipline to focus on what you\u2019re going to do. What I used to do was sing Janis Joplin songs and count in many languages. Bonnie would also hand me everything I had to eat with a pole, and at that point I would try to concentrate on what I was doing without caring about what was going on around me.<\/span><\/p>\n

[\u201cThese kinds of extraordinary endurance activities are done at a relatively low intensity. For example, if you ran 177 kilometers in 53 hours, that\u2019s about 3.2 kilometers per hour, or a slow walk. You\u2019re not sprinting. So of course you have to be in extraordinary physical shape,\u201d said Benjamin Levine, a U.S. sports cardiologist who has studied extraordinary endurance athletes and is the director of the Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine in Dallas, Texas.]<\/span><\/p>\n

Tattoos<\/h3>\n

\u201cOur relationship is based on that. Diana is amazing in the water, but not so much out of the water,\u201d Bonnie says.<\/span><\/p>\n

The trainer recalls that, as they decided to get matching tattoos with the Japanese inscription <\/span>Ishin-denshini<\/span><\/i> (communicating feelings and thoughts without words), and as \u201cDiana tends to magnify things, hers is much bigger and mine a little more subtle.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Diana Nyad shows her tattoo with the Japanese inscription Ishin-denshini, which denotes a form of interpersonal communication through a mutual unspoken language. Photo: Otmaro Rodr\u00edguez.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWhen they finished doing Diana\u2019s tattoo, she was crying and complaining a lot about the pain. I told her that it hadn\u2019t hurt me,\u201d Stoll recalls.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThen the tattoo artist says to Diana: \u2018but if you endured the jellyfish and the danger of the sharks, how can you not endure the pain of a tattoo smaller than those creatures?\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The film<\/h3>\n

The athlete recounted her feat in her memoir <\/span>Find a Way<\/span><\/i>, on which the film was based.<\/span><\/p>\n

Starring two Hollywood powerhouses, Anette Bening (Diana) and Jodie Foster (Bonnie), <\/span>Nyad<\/span><\/i> was classified as a sports drama, directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, and written by Julia Cox.<\/span><\/p>\n