The morbid (and offensive) obsession with swimming from Cuba to the U.S.
Only God knows how many Cubans have lost their lives in the Florida Straits trying to escape the island prison of Cuba. Nevertheless, there seems to be some morbid (and offensive) obsession with foreigners wanting to swim from Cuba to the U.S. as if the countless dead in those waters never existed.
Australian to swim Cuba-US without shark cage
SYDNEY — An Australian open-water distance swimmer who has made multiple crossings of the English Channel on Sunday announced an ambitious bid to swim solo from Cuba to the United States without a shark cage.
Chloe McCardel, 27, has twice won the Channel Swimming Association's Sotiraki Cup for the fastest swim by a woman across the strait between England and France -- in 2011 and 2012 -- and has also won the gruelling Manhattan Island Marathon.
But McCardel has set an even loftier goal for 2013, unveiling plans to swim a daunting 170 kilometres (106 miles) solo and non-stop from Havana in Cuba to Florida's Key West in some 60-70 hours.
If successful she will set a new world record for longest solo unassisted ocean swim, currently held by British-Australian Penny Palfrey for a 108-kilometre swim without shark cage or wetsuit in the Caribbean in 2011.
For the first time in history McCardel hopes to complete the testing Gulf Stream and Florida Straits crossing without the protection of a shark cage, compounding the difficulty of her daring feat.
Continue reading HERE.
Maybe the Democracia folks can chum the waters a few hundred yards ahead of her to increase the challenge
My take: All this chick wants is attention plus a new record. It’s all the same to her whether it involves the Florida Straits or any other location. She is not interested in how many Cubans have died in those waters or why, assuming she’s even aware of the matter, because to her that’s beside the point. This is about her and what she wants for herself. Based on what I can gather, I find her much less offensive than the blubbering Nyad sea cow, who should know far better than some young girl from Australia.
Coincidentally, from Cuba to Bahamas (Andros) it is also 90 miles, as well as from Cuba to Jamaica. But I guess the route with the most deaths, the one with an infamous history, is the one that serves better for show.
I never saw it this way; but yes, there is a questionable pattern building here.
We should have kept a part of the Berlin Wall up and turned it into some sort of extreme sport court filled with climbing and paintball evading challenges.