Anita MitchellFind Your Own Finish Line
Updated: Sep 27, 2021
Who: Diana Nyad
City: Fort Lauderdale (now living in Los Angeles CA)
Quote: “Better than the sunrise, it saw the lights of Key West.”
“I became a serious swimmer in 7th grade at Pine Crest School. The idea of swimming from Cuba’s Havana Harbor to Smathers Beach in Key West started on the day my mom and I were together at A1A and E. Las Olas. She pointed her finger east and told me that Cuba was so close that I could swim there.
I never forgot that.
51 years later at age 64, I became the first person to swim the 111 miles, the equivalent of five English Channel swims, from Havana’s Hemingway Marina to Smathers Beach in Key West. That shark infested swim in September of 2013-- without a shark cage -- took