US swimmer ends Cuba-to-Florida bid

A 61-year-old US distance swimmer said Tuesday she had ended her bid to cross the shark-infested waters from Cuba to Florida at about the halfway mark after suffering from shoulder pain and asthma. Ocean swells also dogged Diana Nyad on her second attempt to swim the 100 miles (161 kilometers) across the treacherous Florida Straits before she was finally brought aboard a boat, vomiting, at about 12:45 am, CNN reported. But the swimmer, who had said she hoped to bring Cuba and the United States closer together with the athletic feat, said she did not regret trying. "It felt like this was my moment. I don't feel like a failure at all. But we needed a little more luck," Nyad said in a Twitter post. "It's hard because I felt like I had it in me." Later, she told CNN, "I would be lying to say I'm not deeply, deeply disappointed," adding she was unlikely to try again in the future. Nyad began her attempt late Sunday to make the difficult crossing. Had she succeeded, she would have been the first person to have done so without a shark cage. But just three hours after she started the swim, she was battling shoulder pain. She then said she was having trouble breathing about 12 hours later. Shortly before abandoning her effort, Nyad was only able to swim three or four strokes before rolling onto her back to catch her breath. At the 29-hour mark, she called it quits. "Asthma took so much out of me," she told CNN. "I couldn't overcome it.... the asthma really shafted me." "I just knew it wasn't mind over matter anymore. I was absolutely spent," she said. Nyad arrived in Florida on Tuesday by boat. The swimmer had already made a first attempt to cross the Florida Straits in 1978, which she was forced to abandon due to poor weather. The following year, Nyad set an open sea record by swimming from the Bahamas to the Florida Keys -- a journey that is the same distance as the Cuba-Florida swim, but a feat she described as much less dangerous. Five yachts and four kayaks accompanied her on her latest journey, along with a 45-person support team, including trained shark divers and electronic devices designed to repel the predators. Australian swimmer Susie Maroney, at 22, became the first person to swim from Cuba to the United States in 1997, though she used a shark cage. Nyad, who turns 62 later this month, set a record for circling the island of Manhattan at the age of 50, clocking in at seven hours and 57 minutes. The United States has not had diplomatic relations with Cuba since 1961 when it slapped a trade embargo on the communist-ruled island.