This evening I watched Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi's new Netflix feature film Nyad, about the long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad's mission to long-stroke from Cuba to Key West, Florida. Annette Bening, as Nyad, and Jodie Foster, as her trainer, Bonnie, and Rhys Ifans, as their navigator, were stellar. The swim, of 112 miles, took 53 hours, and she completed it on her fifth attempt, on September 2, 2013, at the age of 64.
Which got me wondering about other extreme sport world records. And I found a few (thank you, Google). For example:
Longest freedive under ice: 76.2 meters, just over 2 minutes, under an ice-covered lake in Greenland, record set by Stig Åvall Severinsen of Denmark—wearing only swim trunks (brrrrr).
This May, 80-year-old Japanese mountaineer Yuichiro Miura became the oldest person to summit Mount Everest: his third time atop the 29,035-foot peak.
Highest freefall parachute jump: 38,964.2 meters (24 miles), by Felix Baumgartner of Germany; it took 4 minutes 20 seconds.
Highest wave surfed: October 29, 2020, Sebastian Steudtner of Germany, an 86-foot wave in Nazare, Portugal
Highest bungee jump: May 5, 2002—Curtis Rivers, from a hot air balloon at 4,632 meters (15,200 feet) over Puertollano, Spain. His cord was 10 meters long, extending to 30; he bounced five times, then released himself and parachuted to earth.
And just to give a shout-out to my favorite (not so extreme) sport, the record—as of 2011—number of geocaches found in a single 24-hour period: 1,157. That's crazy! I've been geocaching for almost 17 years, and I've only found 5,240 caches. And people call me obsessed!
But back to Diana, whose achievement really was remarkable: here's a TED talk she gave after her (yes, I repeat myself) remarkable achievement.
Just today I was talking with a friend about passions, must-dos, as we grow older. I don't have any right now. And I want to do something about that. I'm just not sure what...
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