61-year-old swimmer ends battle-of-the-sexes debate

The toughest athlete in the world is not a linebacker who works only on a Saturday or Sunday and spends half of that day watching from the sidelines. It’s not a baseball player who loiters in the outfield for one half of the game and sits in the dugout for most of the rest. It’s not a basketball player whose running and jumping is interrupted every 30 seconds or so by a referee’s whistle. And it’s certainly not a golfer, a tennis player or a race car driver.

The toughest athlete in the world is a 61-year-old woman.

Tough? You wanna talk about tough? I’ll give you tough. Last Sunday evening, Diana Nyad — 61 years old — went for a swim. She stepped into the water from a marina in Cuba and began stroking her way toward a beach in Key West, Fla.

That’s a distance of 103 miles.

Through ocean swells.

Filled with sharks.

For any person to whom two laps in the community pool is followed by 30 minutes of heavy gasping, the thought of swimming 103 miles would be inconceivable.

But if all went well, Nyad estimated, she would complete her swimathon in 60 hours.

All did not go well, though. After 3 miles her right shoulder seized up with pain. But she kept going. On Monday afternoon she suffered an asthma attack. She kept going. But after 12 more hours in the water she began vomiting.

Her “Xtreme Dream” was over. She was pulled out of the water onto a support boat. She had “failed.” After “just” 29 hours she had covered “only” an estimated 53 miles.

Like most men raised in the Neanderthal age of sports viewing, I generally have regarded with bemusement any discussions suggesting that male and female athletes are equal, toughness-wise.

Women basketball players may have a lot of dribbling passing and shooting skills, but how many of them can shatter a backboard with a slam dunk?

If female baseball players had a league of their own, I still wouldn’t go to their games because there never would be any 400-foot home runs.

Watch women’s golf? I can’t even stand to watch men’s golf.

And despite Diana Nyad’s amazing “failure,” I’m still not ready to spend my Sunday afternoons watching women’s soccer instead of the NFL.

But the next time I see some 350-pound lineman signaling to the sidelines that he has to waddle off the field because he’s been out there for three consecutive plays, it’s going to be tough to resist the urge to shout:

“Cowgirl up, you wimp.”

Contact D.L. Stewart at dlstew_2000@yahoo.com.