How many times have I started a posted a post with similar words to; “Strange things happen in marathon swimming?”

Ah, how the worm turns.

One reader of LoneSwimmer.com is a pool swimmer with their sights set on open water and their first 10k swim, always a big milestone. Their research led to LoneSwimmer.com and accidentally to my very popular LoneSwimmer.com article on Nyad’s controversial claimed Cuba to Florida swim.

Said reader is also a “nondescript” (their term) employee of Harpo Productions. This  is the parent company of Oprah Prime and Oprah.com, which since the demise of the networked Oprah TV show, is the main outlet of host Oprah Winfrey. It’s the media avenue where the Lance Armstrong “confession” was made, in his failed attempt to convince the world it was everyone else’s fault.

On Friday night I received a camera phone photograph of notes taken in a post-recording production roundup meeting.

These brief coffee-stained and handwritten notes claim Diana Nyad has recorded a show with Oprah Winfrey. A brief “Executive Summary” calls the recording “Confessional and redemption-seeking” wherein she will likely admit to fraud during the events of the last Cuba to Florida attempt. Details will only be evident on the web release in May as our source didn’t see the actual recording or tape.

Given Diana Nyad’s lifelong history of self-promotion, is there any announcement in swimming less anticipated than this?

In marathon swimming, routes once apparently closed open up, connections previously unknown become apparent.

Since the events of last autumn, Diana Nyad has continued to peddle outright lies about the events, amongst which are claiming to have supplied proof of the swim to the satisfaction of the review panel, and continues to claim some mythical world records. But the supposed swim remains shrouded behind verbiage and a lack of any actual evidence and her post-swim fabrications were far more obvious to anyone interested, as could be seen on her reddit AMA in the New Year. (An online question and answer discussion session). (Some user called LoneSwimmer responds).

However, Hollywood hasn’t beaten a path to her door. She didn’t win the National Geographic People’s Choice Adventurer Award, her hoped-for musical based on her life is apparently no closer, and the public exposure of her treatment of Walter Poenisch all those years ago has become a publicity liability. So the avenues available for her further self-promotion were becoming  limited. As I can see from the search terms into LoneSwimmer, people now searching for Diana Nyad know there’s a controversy or even deception and most likely even use those words . This slipping from the public eye led to a failed turn on America’s Dancing With The Stars, some reality TV program, which like other similar reality TV dross, rounds up has-beens, never-weres and wanna-bes, in an orgy of desperate public attention-seeking.

But when those who know aren’t to be convinced, and the questions won’t go away, what better way to for a relentless self-promoter to grab the public attention than to throw themselves on the mercy of the public, and seek “redemption”. The public generally loves stories of redemption with a little bit of embarrassment.

I  have long held to the similarity between Diana Nyad and Lance Armstrong in terms of narcissism, media control, self-promotion and sporting deception. That analogy continues to be relevant.

Time will tell.