Diana Nyad, the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage, had barely made it to shore before critics started questioning the integrity of her record-breaking swim.
Some skeptics, including fellow marathon swimmers, questioned whether Nyad had more help than strong currents during a particularly speedy part of her journey -- speculating that she may have held onto the boat that was accompanying her or even got in for a ride.
"The haters came out," Oprah says in the above clip from her two-part interview with Nyad on "Super Soul Sunday." "And I'm like, 'People, my Lord, would you leave the woman alone? She just swam for 53 hours!' What did that feel like, though, having people say, you know –"
"It was a fraud?" Nyad says. "I know, can you imagine?"
"First of all, we had 44 people out there -- people of great scientific repute," she says. "They're not going to be involved with something that was shady, by any means."
"But there are two factions of that," Nyad continues. "One is, people have a right. If somebody else did it, I would, respectfully -- not in some rush to judgment, statements to press -- but I would go quietly to a swimmer and their team and say, 'I'd like to look at the navigational log.' Because all of us have tried this too hard and it did seem impossible."
Part 2 of Oprah's conversation with Nyad on "Super Soul Sunday" airs Sunday, October 13 at 11 a.m. ET on OWN.
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