never too late
Diana Nyad, a long-distance endurance swimmer in the manner and style of Lynne Cox (Swimming To Antarctica, The Tale of Long Distance Swimmer), is coming out of retirement to do battle with the waters that defeated her more than three decades ago. She first attempted to swim the 103 miles from Cuba to Florida in 1978, in a floating shark cage. Strong winds, however, blew her off course, and after 49 hours, her crew quite rightly pulled her out, exhausted and hallucinating. The following year Diana hung up her swimsuit for good suffering burn-out, mental exhaustion and very wrinkly fingers.
Now, 31 years later, she’s back in lycra and is readying herself for an imminent attempt on the infamous Cuba-Florida challenge again, claiming it was turning 60 that did it for her: something about having unfinished business and the fact that she says “‘it p*ssed me right off”. Kinda places my weekly (weakly!) 3km lake swim into some perspective and all goes to show you’re never too old.
And at the opposite end of the age spectrum, last week saw 16 year old George Atkinson reach the summit of Mt Everest, and so enter the record books as the youngest person to scale the ‘seven summits’, the tallest mountain on each continent. All goes to show you’re never too young.
