Sixty-one-year-old US swimmer Diana Nyad sets off from Cuba on a 60-hour swim to Florida in shark-infested waters
Sixty-one-year-old US swimmer Diana Nyad sets off from Cuba on a 60-hour swim to Florida in shark-infested waters.
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With a calm sea before her, Nyad plunged into the Straits of Florida at dusk on Sunday to begin what she hopes will be a world record 166-km swim from Cuba to Florida.
Diana Nyad is hoping to break the record to foster
friendly relations between the two countries
Before heading out to sea, she confidently told the crowds that had gathered at the Marina Hemingway on the outskirts of Havana that she would return to celebrate the feat with them.
"I'm standing here in the prime of my life ... Now I look out at a dead, flat calm, so I think this is my day," she said.
Nyad tried the crossing from Cuba in 1978 but failed. The same swim was completed successfully by Australian Susan Maroney in May 1997.
But Nyad's claim to a world record will be that, unlike Maroney, she is doing it without a shark cage in the strait's warm, shark-infested waters.
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