Sports
‘Like I just swam the English Channel’
Marathon swimmer completes 110-mile dream goal at 64
Diana Nyad swam the roughly 110 miles from Cuba in just under 53 hours without a shark cage or swim fins. (Photo by Dawn L. Blomgren; courtesy of 42 West)
On Monday, Diana Nyad walked onto the shore at Smathers Beach in Key West just after 2 p.m. She had just swam the roughly 110 miles from Cuba in just under 53 hours without a shark cage or swim fins. She is the first person to accomplish this feat.
This was the fifth and final attempt for the 64-year-old Nyad, who came out of retirement from marathon swimming in 2010 to revisit her dream of making the crossing, which she first attempted in 1978.
Her second, third and fourth attempts between 2010 and 2012 ended for a variety of reasons including weather conditions and repeated stinging by jellyfish and man-of-wars.
Nyad had three things to say to her cheering onlookers when she reached the sand.
“One is, we should never give up,” she said. “And two is, you are never too old to chase your dreams. Three is, it looks like a solitary sport, but it’s a team,” Nyad said as she was whisked away for medical examination.
While Diana Nyad may be a new name to most of the world, she grabbed my attention in 1975 when she made national headlines by swimming the 28 miles around the island of Manhattan in less than eight hours.
At the time I was swimming in the long distance program at the Greater Toledo Aquatic Club. Besides competing in pools, we also hosted one- and four-mile open water races in a local quarry every summer.
When Nyad came into the public eye, her accomplishments were unfathomable to all of who were doing the same thing on a much smaller scale. Nyad, along with another marathon swimmer from the same era, Lynne Cox, became an instant hero to the entire swimming community.
A few of my teammates were so inspired by Nyad’s Manhattan swim that a few years later they made their own open water attempt at crossing the widest part of Lake Erie. It’s 57 statute miles from Cleveland to the shores of Canada and my teammates were eventually pulled out of the water at just under the 30-mile mark.
Nyad’s marathon swimming accomplishments spanned the entire decade of the 1970s. Her first attempt at swimming from Cuba to Key West was in August of 1978, in a shark cage, which ended with her being pulled out after 76 miles. Her final competitive swim was in August of 1979 when she set a world record for distance swimming (both men and women) by swimming 102 miles from the Bahamas to Florida in just over 27 hours.
After Nyad retired, the sport of open water swimming exploded and thousands of athletes, including myself, are racing in oceans, rivers, lakes and bays. A 10K race for men and women was finally introduced at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 5K, 10K and 25K races are contested at the FINA World Championships every two years.
Here in D.C., during the summer months, up to 80 swimmers can be seen jumping off the pier every Thursday night in National Harbor for swims out around the buoys in the Potomac River. The swims are part of a training series run by Wave One Swimming. The group will host the 2013 Swim for the Potomac which includes open water races in the 3K, 5K and 10K disciplines on Sept. 15.
Just a few days before Nyad — who is openly gay — began her epic swim on Aug. 31, I met two women at the pool who were training for the Potomac River 7.5 Mile for the Environment next year.
I asked how long they had been active in open water swimming and one said, “Oh, we are suffering from late-life athleticism.”
When Diana Nyad finished her incredible journey on Monday, I wondered if those two women realized that their late-life athleticism was probably in some way related to Nyad’s accomplishments.
Since completing her swim, Nyad’s Twitter feed has been overwhelmed with messages from well-wishers including a special tweet from President Obama. Several men, myself included, admitted to shedding tears over her triumph and several parents stated that their children have a new hero.
I am incredibly happy that the world is honoring Nyad for her astounding athletic accomplishment.
Sports
Attitude! French ice dancers nail ‘Vogue’ routine
Cizeron and Fournier Beaudry strike a pose in memorable Olympics performance
Madonna’s presence is being felt at the Olympic Games in Italy.
Guillaume Cizeron and his rhythm ice dancing partner Laurence Fournier Beaudry of France performed a flawless skate to Madonna’s “Vogue” and “Rescue Me” on Monday.
The duo scored an impressive 90.18 for their effort, the best score of the night.
“We’ve been working hard the whole season to get over 90, so it was nice to see the score on the screen,” Fournier Beaudry told Olympics.com. “But first of all, just coming out off the ice, we were very happy about what we delivered and the pleasure we had out there. With the energy of the crowd, it was really amazing.”
Watch the routine on YouTube here.
Italy
Olympics Pride House ‘really important for the community’
Italy lags behind other European countries in terms of LGBTQ rights
The four Italian advocacy groups behind the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics’ Pride House hope to use the games to highlight the lack of LGBTQ rights in their country.
Arcigay, CIG Arcigay Milano, Milano Pride, and Pride Sport Milano organized the Pride House that is located in Milan’s MEET Digital Culture Center. The Washington Blade on Feb. 5 interviewed Pride House Project Manager Joseph Naklé.
Naklé in 2020 founded Peacox Basket Milano, Italy’s only LGBTQ basketball team. He also carried the Olympic torch through Milan shortly before he spoke with the Blade. (“Heated Rivalry” stars Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie last month participated in the torch relay in Feltre, a town in Italy’s Veneto region.)
Naklé said the promotion of LGBTQ rights in Italy is “actually our main objective.”
ILGA-Europe in its Rainbow Map 2025 notes same-sex couples lack full marriage rights in Italy, and the country’s hate crimes law does not include sexual orientation or gender identity. Italy does ban discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, but the country’s nondiscrimination laws do not include gender identity.
ILGA-Europe has made the following recommendations “in order to improve the legal and policy situation of LGBTI people in Italy.”
• Marriage equality for same-sex couples
• Depathologization of trans identities
• Automatic co-parent recognition available for all couples
“We are not really known to be the most openly LGBT-friendly country,” Naklé told the Blade. “That’s why it (Pride House) was really important for the community.”
“We want to use the Olympic games — because there is a big media attention — and we want to use this media attention to raise the voice,” he added.
Naklé noted Pride House will host “talks and roundtables every night” during the games that will focus on a variety of topics that include transgender and nonbinary people in sports and AI. Another will focus on what Naklé described to the Blade as “the importance of political movements now to fight for our rights, especially in places such as Italy or the U.S. where we are going backwards, and not forwards.”
Seven LGBTQ Olympians — Italian swimmer Alex Di Giorgio, Canadian ice dancers Paul Poirier and Kaitlyn Weaver, Canadian figure skater Eric Radford, Spanish figure skater Javier Raya, Scottish ice dancer Lewis Gibson, and Irish field hockey and cricket player Nikki Symmons — are scheduled to participate in Pride House’s Out and Proud event on Feb. 14.
Pride House Los Angeles – West Hollywood representatives are expected to speak at Pride House on Feb. 21.
The event will include a screening of Mariano Furlani’s documentary about Pride House and LGBTQ inclusion in sports. The MiX International LGBTQ+ Film and Queer Culture Festival will screen later this year in Milan. Pride House Los Angeles – West Hollywood is also planning to show the film during the 2028 Summer Olympics.
Naklé also noted Pride House has launched an initiative that allows LGBTQ sports teams to partner with teams whose members are either migrants from African and Islamic countries or people with disabilities.
“The objective is to show that sports is the bridge between these communities,” he said.
Bisexual US skier wins gold
Naklé spoke with the Blade a day before the games opened. The Milan Cortina Winter Olympics will close on Feb. 22.
More than 40 openly LGBTQ athletes are competing in the games.
Breezy Johnson, an American alpine skier who identifies as bisexual, on Sunday won a gold medal in the women’s downhill. Amber Glenn, who identifies as bisexual and pansexual, on the same day helped the U.S. win a gold medal in team figure skating.
Glenn said she received threats on social media after she told reporters during a pre-Olympics press conference that LGBTQ Americans are having a “hard time” with the Trump-Vance administration in the White House. The Associated Press notes Glenn wore a Pride pin on her jacket during Sunday’s medal ceremony.
“I was disappointed because I’ve never had so many people wish me harm before, just for being me and speaking about being decent — human rights and decency,” said Glenn, according to the AP. “So that was really disappointing, and I do think it kind of lowered that excitement for this.”
Puerto Rico
Bad Bunny shares Super Bowl stage with Ricky Martin, Lady Gaga
Puerto Rican activist celebrates half time show
Bad Bunny on Sunday shared the stage with Ricky Martin and Lady Gaga at the Super Bowl halftime show in Santa Clara, Calif.
Martin came out as gay in 2010. Gaga, who headlined the 2017 Super Bowl halftime show, is bisexual. Bad Bunny has championed LGBTQ rights in his native Puerto Rico and elsewhere.
“Not only was a sophisticated political statement, but it was a celebration of who we are as Puerto Ricans,” Pedro Julio Serrano, president of the LGBTQ+ Federation of Puerto Rico, told the Washington Blade on Monday. “That includes us as LGBTQ+ people by including a ground-breaking superstar and legend, Ricky Martin singing an anti-colonial anthem and showcasing Young Miko, an up-and-coming star at La Casita. And, of course, having queer icon Lady Gaga sing salsa was the cherry on the top.”
La Casita is a house that Bad Bunny included in his residency in San Juan, the Puerto Rican capital, last year. He recreated it during the halftime show.
“His performance brought us together as Puerto Ricans, as Latin Americans, as Americans (from the Americas) and as human beings,” said Serrano. “He embraced his own words by showcasing, through his performance, that the ‘only thing more powerful than hate is love.’”
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Trump falsely links trans people to terrorism
Fellow lawmakers praise Adam Ebbin after Va. Senate farewell address
LGBTQ groups question US health agreements with African countries
European Parliament resolution backs ‘full recognition of trans women as women’
FOIA lawsuit filed against State Department for PEPFAR records
Trans sports bans rooted in eugenics
Pride flag raised at Stonewall after National Park Service took it down
Trans students not included in new India University Grants Commission equity rules
Calendar: February 13-19
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State Department5 days agoFOIA lawsuit filed against State Department for PEPFAR records
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Opinions5 days ago
Trans sports bans rooted in eugenics
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New York5 days ago
Pride flag raised at Stonewall after National Park Service took it down
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India5 days ago
Trans students not included in new India University Grants Commission equity rules
