What crazy things people do for fame and fortune--and that is before the questions

The 64-year-old long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad is nothing if not persistent, and after three previous failed attempts, she got all her protective measures in line and accomplished the feat of swimming (more or less) from Cuba to Florida, a distance of 103 miles. Aftwerward she looked like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Why would anyone wish to do this? Obviously for publicity, fame and fortune (for Nyad, I would add politics). I confess that if she had to abandon a sinking ship and swam the distance with no rescuers in sight, I would be more impressed; most people lost at sea do not have a nearby support staff on ship ready to supply food and water. Nyad had at least one overnight, and I’m sure there were no prying cameras to observe her activities during that period. She also wore this ghoulish mask that prevented stinging from jellyfish; it was pointed out that at some point divers cleared the final distance of those nasty jellyfish that helped divert her previous attempts. I would I suspect that Nyad also used “performance enhancing” chemicals, but then again she doesn’t engage in a regulated “sport.” 

Some people may recognize Nyad’s name, and assume that she was an Olympic champion. In fact she was never an Olympian; her notoriety is based solely on the occasional personal feats of derring-do, mostly long-distance swimming. She never actually “competed” against anyone but herself. But she is hardly alone in trying to make a name for herself in what is usually engaged in as a leisure activity. 15 years ago, a much younger Susie Maroney, an Australian, swam the same distance while inside a shark cage. Now, some people might question how you can “swim” in a shark cage unless it is being towed along by a boat, which might have helped her along her way in more subtle ways. 

More recently another Australian, Penny Palfrey, swam between the Gand and Little Cayman Islands, a distance of about 70 miles, and supposedly the longest solo “unassisted” open water swim. Of course, women are not the only people who think that long-distance swimming is a worthwhile occupation; in 2006, a Croatian named Veljko Rogosic swam nearly 140 miles in the Adriatic Sea; it is listed by Guinness World Records as the longest swim in open water without flippers.

And then there are the more "impressive"--and even more dubious--accomplishments. Ben Lecompte allegedly swam the Atlantic Ocean in 1998, although there was some debate on how far the boat he occasionally took rest breaks “drifted” forward. Amateur mathematicians calculated that he would have had to swim an average of 8 miles per hour to go 3,716 miles in 73 days; the fastest marathon runners run less than 13 miles an hour—and then their legs feel like logs for a week.

There is no doubt a great deal of fakery goes on in long-distance swimming, A few years ago, Jennifer Figge allegedly swam the shorter route across the Atlantic, 2,700 in just 24 days. It was noted that in order to accomplish that feat, Figge would have had to swim faster than Olympic champion Michael Phelps—minute-by-minute, 24 hours a day. When confronted with the numbers, Figge later confessed that she spent at least five full days on her support boat, and for “several” more days spent most of her time on said boat.

It should be noted that most of these long-distance swims take place in warm, tropical or semi-tropical waters; according to our history books, all but a handful of passengers left in the water after the Titanic sank survived for only a few hours in the bone-chilling April waters of the North Atlantic. Thus a more impressive feat of swimming was that performed by Lewis Pugh, a British barrister and non-professional swimmer. In 2007 he swam a distance of one kilometer (approximately .62 miles) at the North Pole, in waters at or below freezing, In waters that most people would expire in minutes, Pugh dived in protected only by Speedo briefs and a cap. Afterwards, he described how "The pain was immediate and felt like my body was on fire. I was in excruciating pain from beginning to end and I nearly quit on a few occasions."

Pugh later performed the same feat in the waters off the coast of Antarctica. “As soon as I dived in, I had a screaming pain all over my body,” he said. “After three minutes, I'd lost all feeling in my hands and feet. And after six minutes I lost all feeling throughout my arms and legs. I am not sure how I kept on going for so long. I had to concentrate all the time and swim as fast as I could to keep the cold out.”

Of course, we can go back to the question of why people would subject themselves to extreme physical agony over a quest that has no real value in the grand scheme of things, save as some bizarre medical experiment on the capacities of the human body. Perhaps beyond the simple desire of fame and glory, maybe it is just the desire of do something no one else can claim, no matter how head-scratching. Of course, it would be nice to know that there was no “cheating” involved in the accomplishment, because that only makes the incomprehensible ridiculous.