Swimmer Diana Nyad: ‘I want to go on’

Diana Nyad’s team has a way of making failure sound not so bad. Nyad’s website has blogged about her latest unsuccessful attempt to swim from Cuba to Florida and refers to the attempt as a dream that became “record-breaking reality.”

The Nyad team makes it clear that Diana, a 62-year-old long-distance swimmer, resisted attempts to end the swim.

“When can I get back in? ... I have plenty left in me and I want to go on,” she’s quoted as saying.

PHOTOS: Diana Nyad forced to end swim

But there was lightning and wind, she was stung repeatedly by box jellyfish, and sharks were defying her team of divers’ efforts to shoo them away.

This attempt, her fourth, lasted 41 hours and 45 minutes in the water. Candace Hogan notes on the Nyad site that the swimmer put in nearly the same number of hours in 1978 when she made her first attempt to swim from Cuba to Florida -- but this time, she swam farther and got closer to Florida than before.

With this much effort and the number of hours Nyad has put into making the swim, few would call her a quitter.

At midmorning Tuesday, Nyad reportedly had had a chance to rest. She was planning on being dropped off from her support boat and swimming ashore in Key West, Fla., where she would talk to media.

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