A decade after she became the first person to swim from Havana, Cuba, to Key West, Florida, without a shark cage, Diana Nyad’s epic journey has been chronicled in a highly anticipated — and contested — biopic that premiered Friday on Netflix.
Adapted by Julia Cox from Nyad’s memoir, “Find a Way,” and directed by the husband-and-wife team of Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, the crowd-pleasing sports film “Nyad” dramatizes the later-in-life triumph of the charismatic but divisive long-distance swimmer.
Three decades after retiring from marathon swimming to embark on a second act as a sports journalist, Nyad became obsessed with the feat that had eluded her as a 28-year-old in 1978. So in 2013, at the age of 64, Nyad completed the 53-hour, 110-mile trek from Cuba to Florida on her fifth attempt, cementing her place as one of the most accomplished swimmers of her discipline.
The Cuba to Florida crossing, through the Florida Straits, has long held a mystique for marathon swimmers for its challenging conditions. Unlike the English Channel, where the water temperature averages about 62F, the Florida waters are warmer, in the 80F range, but that also means they are home to dangerous marine life—most notably sharks and box jellyfish, whose stings can transfer enough toxin to paralyze and even kill a person. The Gulf Stream also makes the currents quixotic, so if a swimmer isn't guided by a seasoned navigator, she could find herself pushed off course into the Gulf of Mexico or toward the Bahamas. A few people had attempted it, but only with shark cages, including Nyad during that first try in her 20s.
Nyad, now 74, has written four books including the 2016 memoir Find a Way, which detailed the philosophies and experiences behind her single-minded determination to come out of swimming retirement and finish what she started years before — at what most assumed was the peak of her athletic career. “I failed and faltered many times, but I can look back without regret because I was never burdened with the paralysis of fear and inaction,” she wrote.
Adapted by screenwriter Julia Cox from Nyad’s memoir, directed by Free Solo Oscar winners Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, and costarring Jodie Foster, Nyad is in theaters and available to stream on Netflix. Read on for the extraordinary true story of the woman who inspired it.
television actors are fighting for fair contracts with major entertainment companies like Netflix has made the rollout of “Nyad” a little bittersweet. With their other films, the filmmakers had loved watching their subjects get to see audiences respond to them and their work.
“We respect the fight that’s happening now. It is really important and urgent,” Vasarhelyi said. “But we haven’t had that sharing of that experience with the people who gave the most to the film."
And, she said, “I really wish that Annette could be present so people will see how people celebrate her performance.”
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