Never Say Die

I am writing this column from the beautiful Allure of the Seas where my company, Card Player Cruises, is hosting the Card Player Poker Tour. I am fortunate enough to be on the cruise for three weeks… the first week is to prepare for the poker cruises, which will take place on the second and third week of the cruise. During the first week, I had a lot of free time, so I got to watch movies, go to shows, try out the restaurants, play trivia, etc.

I decided to write this column about an inspirational movie I just watched called The Other Shore. It is a documentary about Diana Nyad, the long distance swimmer. If you haven’t seen this movie, you should rent it right away!

Nyad was a champion marathon swimmer when she was in her 20s. She broke a speed record for swimming 28 miles around Manhattan. On her 30th birthday, she swam the 102- mile crossing between the Bahamas and Florida, averaging 3.7 miles per hour and set a record for nonstop swimming without a shark cage that still stands today. Nyad attempted to swim from Florida to Cuba without a shark cage in 1978, but had to abort her swim due to strong currents moving her off course. A year later, she retired from competitive swimming to start a career in broadcasting, motivational speaking, and journalism, but she never forgot about her failed attempt to swim the Cuba-Florida crossing.

In 2009, at the age of 60, Nyad was looking for a challenge that would fulfill her, motivate her, and get her into shape. She said, “When you’re 60, no matter how healthy or fit you are, you are getting near toward the end of that one-way road that we are all traveling on. I asked myself if I had truly become the person that I admire. I didn’t feel as awake, alert, and alive as I wanted to feel for the rest of my days.” She decided to train hard and try once again to make the swim between Cuba and Florida, a feat that no one else in the world had yet accomplished. She remembered her failed attempt 30 years earlier. Since then, this feat had eluded everyone who had attempted it and was considered to be one of the last great, uncompleted swimming accomplishments. Most swimmers thought it could not be done.

Nyad set out with a plan to train hard. She gathered a support team of 25 people to help her with her plan, including a manager, weather routers, navigators, boating crew members, nutritionists, medical professionals, and shark experts. She raised funds to have a specially designed catamaran built. The catamaran was equipped with an underwater feature that had a streamer that acted like a pool lane marker to keep her on course.

She moved to St. Maarten and began intense training. She started building her stamina with 8-10-12-and 24-hour swims, and eventually her training swims got longer. She relied on her team for advice on the timing of her record-breaking attempt. Her team had to find the perfect conditions regarding water temperature and currents. Between 2010 and 2013, Nyad attempted the swim three times, but each time she failed. The movie details these attempts that were aborted due to issues like her asthma condition, jelly fish stings that led to respiratory distress, powerful currents, sharks, and other problems.

Nyad contemplated giving up after each failed attempt, but after resting and recovering, she would call her manager and tell her to assemble the team together again for another try.

On Aug. 31, 2013, she began her fifth attempt at the 110-mile swim from Havana, Cuba to Florida. About 53 hours later, she walked up onto the beach at Key West, becoming the first person in history to accomplish that feat without a shark cage.

When asked about her motivation for the swim, she answered, “I’d like to prove to other 60-year olds that it is never too late to start your dreams.” In other interviews, she said, “Once you walk out onto those rocks in Havana, you have to believe you are going across. There are no ifs. You are making it. And then you deal with it when you don’t succeed.”

Nyad did lots of interviews after her phenomenal swim. She is obviously grateful to the team who helped her achieve her dream and very proud of herself. “I’m walking around tall because of who I am and who I proved I was in the last four years.”

You may be asking yourself why I chose to write about the Nyad swim victory in a magazine devoted to poker enthusiasts. The answer is that Nyad’s story of setting a goal and going after it holds true for most aspects of life, including poker. Many of you reading this would like to become great poker players. Many of you would like to win a gold bracelet at the World Series of Poker. Many of you would like to become winning players or even professional poker players, but how many of you have devised a plan to fulfill your goal?

Have you been able to get yourself into the mindset of a winner? Do you have a support team to enable you to get there? Your plan could involves things like keeping records of your wins and losses, a goal to play X number of hours a month, etc. Your support team doesn’t have to be a staff…it could be books, magazines, poker software, forums, Boot Camps, and of course mentors, etc. As Nyad would say, it’s never too late to go after your dream. ♠

Linda is a WSOP bracelet winner and a member of the Poker Hall of Fame and the Women in Poker Hall of Fame. She is a partner in Card Player Cruises and hosts seminars, poker tournaments, and corporate events throughout the world. You can contact her through her website at www.cardplayercruises.com or through her personal email at [email protected].