If at first you don’t succeed, wait 32 years and try again — this time without a shark cage.
It was the summer of 1978 when, after spending nearly 42 hours battling 8-foot waves, long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad gave up on her bid to set a new long-distance swimming record by crossing the Straits of Florida between the U.S. and Cuba.
Now 61, Nyad will attempt to do what she could not when she was 28.
“People my age, we’re the rock ‘n’ roll generation, the protest generation,” Nyad told AOL News. “We don’t want to go down with out a fight.”
Then again, shortly after Nyad failed in her first attempt to swim 103 miles from Cuba to Florida, she gave up distance swimming, the career that brought her worldwide fame. Burned out from a decade of living the life of a competitive athlete, she settled into a multifaceted career as a writer, radio journalist and motivational speaker.
Who could argue if she wanted to rest on her athletic laurels? After all, during her career, Nyad had set numerous records, including her 102.5-mile swim from the Bahamas to Jupiter, Fla. In 1975, when she circled Manhattan Island in a record time of 7 hours, 57 seconds, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis called Nyad “my hero.”
