AFP - Veteran US endurance swimmer Diana Nyad set off Saturday on her fourth attempt to swim the treacherous waters from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage.
Nyad, who turns 63 on Wednesday, hit the water at 3:42 pm (19H42 GMT). The departure was pushed up a day over fears of poor weather.
Wearing a blue and black bathing suit and a blue swim cap, the swimmer briefly thanked her assistants, the journalists watching and others.
"Thanks for coming," she said, adding the single word "courage," before she jumped in for the 165-kilometer (103-mile) trek that she projects will take some 60 hours.
Nyad admitted earlier that she was nervous.
"I think it's healthy. When you have a respect for something, you have some fear," the swimmer told reporters at the Marina Hemingway, the Havana yacht club where she started the swim.
"There is some fear, but there's also courage, and these three days, I need the courage to be stronger than the fear," she said, adding that she couldn't sleep all night in anticipation.
Accompanying Nyad is a team of 50 people in five yachts, including divers with extensive shark experience and jellyfish experts.
She has refused to use the shark cage, saying the protective device gives a boost to a swimmer's strokes.
The head of Cuba's Swimming Federation explained to AFP that the cage "makes turbulence" in the water, which significantly helps the swimmer.
Nyad was forced to abandon her most recent attempt to cross the Florida Straits in September, 40 hours in, after medics warned she had suffered dangerous jellyfish stings.
The swimmer also failed on two other bids to swim from Cuba to Florida, in 1978 and in August 2011. Shoulder pain, asthma and ocean swells hobbled Nyad's second attempt.
Nyad set an open sea record by swimming from the Bahamas to the Florida Keys in 1979 -- a journey that is the same distance as the Cuba-Florida swim, but a feat she has described as far less dangerous.
And she set a record for circling the island of Manhattan at age 50, clocking in at seven hours and 57 minutes.
In July, British-Australian athlete Penny Palfrey, 49, failed to swim unassisted from Cuba to Florida and had to be plucked from the ocean after 40 hours in the water when she could no longer cope with a strong ocean current.
Source: http://www.france24.com/en/20120818-diana-nyad-set-fourth-cuba-florida-swim-bid
a thousand words my sisters keeper kirby sarah palin cbi the shins atomic clock
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.