Dear Cassie,

I have received your renewal notice in the mail for your magazine. Please be advised that I will not be renewing my subscription.

I am compelled to write this letter because I must question the judgment of the magazine’s choices of writers. Specifically, you have been featuring Bryan Mineo in your swim section on numerous occasions. There are some facts of which you should be aware.

Year after year, Bryan has promoted the fact publicly that he was going to swim the English Channel and these facts are easily verified online. This past season, back in March, he hosted a fundraiser to swim the English Channel in conjunction with Make-A-Wish Foundation of Texas and raised over $10,000 in order to complete the swim. He did not complete the swim, he did not donate the funds to Make-A-Wish, and he did not return the money to his donors, of which I was unfortunately one. Effectively, his donors were defrauded.

Further, Bryan had zero open water swim experience prior to Spring of 2012. He has almost no experience as a triathlete and therefore in my view is wholly unqualified to opine on the subject of triathlon swimming. He has no background in competitive swimming. He is an amateur and a fraud on many levels, and to the extent that your magazine supports his work, I must regretfully say that I cannot support yours. I find it disappointing that the writers for your magazine are not more thoroughly vetted in terms of qualifications and experience.

Very truly yours,
Lila A. Murphy
cc: Josh Furlow, President, Competitor Group Inc.

What I would like to add comes more from a safety and responsibility perspective.

In posted videos and clips by Bryan Mineo, I am extremely concerned by the apparent lack of adequate safety protocols — from accounting for swimmers to professional lifeguards on the water and beach to safety equipment and buoys. Videos of 50 or more swimmers charging out into dense fog with no visible safety personnel in conditions that would have us cancel a workout are setting a horrible precedent. Bryan is putting his participants in immediate risk, and there is a peripheral risk to the rest of us who must deal with the repercussions that will go beyond one group. I know that we work closely with the local lifeguard agency, and we pay professional ocean lifeguards to cover a planned workout course with the appropriate safety equipment and back-up emergency action plan.

“Bryan represents a dangerous new category of uninformed and unqualified individuals and groups leading inexperienced athletes into normally tranquil but potentially deadly environment.”

He may as well be strapping on crampons and leading recreational runners up Everest. If something catastrophic happens to anyone in one of these groups it is not only horrible for those immediately involved — it also profoundly impacts the rest of us taking people into the water.

Steve Munatones and I worked extensively to design parameters for Special Olympics International’s global open water training and competition program. I would love to see all of us leading open water outings follow basic best practices.

My experience with Bryan’s stealing of ideas is less direct than others. He reached out to me extensively over the winter and then went quiet. My wife is a PhD whose research focuses on mindfulness meditation, and early exchanges with Bryan discussed her work and how it ties into our work with athletes. I have seen too many of his posts that are at the very least plagiarized in thought and concept. What I find dangerous is his inability to even accurately steal someone’s ideas and use them in a cohesive, constructive manner.

Bruckner Chase

Professional Ocean Lifeguard, USLA · Trainer and Instructor, Upper Township Beach Patrol, NJ · Member, Sea Girt Beach Patrol · Member, Monmouth County USLA National Team · CPR / First Aid Certified · Safety Training for Swim Coaches Certified · South Jersey Chiefs Association — Ocean Lifeguard Certified · ASCA Certified Swim Coach · Former USA Swimming Certified Coach · Professional Member, American College of Sports Medicine · Technical Director, Red Bull Surf and Rescue Professional Surf Lifesaving Event · Conservation and Ocean Engagement Advisor, World Open Water Swimming Association · Founder and CEO, Ocean Positive, Inc. · Elite international surf lifesaving competitor · Former professional triathlete · Former ultra-distance runner · Division I Collegiate Swimmer, Rice University · B.A., Exercise Science, Rice University

Dear Triathlete Magazine Editor,

While living in Dallas this author made many claims about his accomplishments, his education, his experience, and bragged a great deal about what he was going to do.

The claims were false.

He never did do the English Channel swim. He has never done a cold water qualifying swim — this is a swim of six hours in 60-degree water or cooler. He never had an escort boat booked in England. Currently boats are booked until the summer of 2017. He took money to cover expenses, stating it was to pay for a boat. He made his claims and went on to sell himself as a superstar distance swimmer, and expert coach. Bryan hosted fundraising events tied to the Make-A-Wish foundation. He used terminally ill children for his own gain and kept the money. Essentially stealing from ill children — it takes a special kind of person to use the emotion of dying kids to con unsuspecting people out of their hard-earned dollars.

My understanding is the foundation has gone after him legally.

He claimed to be a physical therapist, “working at every major hospital in the DFW area.” He has never held a license to practice in the state of Texas. He now makes the claim of physical therapy aide; he holds no license as an aide either. He has had no training in physical therapy. His B.A. is in film, which comes in handy in his deceptive self-promotion.

He has completed a few swims, most of them local events. A search of USA Swimming and United States Masters comes up empty. He has done nothing of note as a child swimmer, high school swimmer, collegiate swimmer, or as an adult.

Sadly, he has conned several people, mostly young and underage girls. He is now hanging with a former Olympian in Southern California. Hope she has locked the gold away safely — he’ll be claiming it as his medal soon enough.

“He is cancer on the open water swimming community.”

You should strongly consider with whom you choose to work and have represent your publication. Triathlete’s association with Bryan reflects poorly on the brand. In addition, it calls into question the number of unqualified “experts” you currently have writing for you. If your vetting of this fraud is an example, one can only wonder if any information from your organization is credible.

You should know better and now you do…

Sincerely,
Anonymous

Open water swimming is a sport that is inherent with risk. As such, it is important to make decisions based on relevant facts and decades of practical experience.

Water temperature, water conditions, winds, currents, tidal flow, fog, lightning, marine life (sharks, jellyfish, seaweed, bacteria) and wave height and direction are among the factors that can affect the performance — and safety — of athletes in the water.

I have covered and competed in open water swims in all seven continents since the 1970s. I can say with complete confidence that there are only a few true watermen who I would entrust my own life with. Gerry Rodrigues is one of those individuals. Not only does Gerry thoroughly understand, properly prepare, and carefully plan for the inherent risks of swimming in myriad conditions that can occur in the open water, but he can also immediately act upon and rescue a swimmer in any distressed situation. The first rule of open water swimming — expect the unexpected — is never taken lightly by Gerry. He has devoted his life to educating individuals of all ages how to perform well and stay safe in any and all ocean environments. His specialized knowledge and scope of experience can only come from decades of swimming in oceans, seas, lakes and rivers.

But, Gerry is rightly concerned about individuals with growing reputations due to regurgitated articles in triathlon publications. These individuals — who are more likely to have a photographer on shore than a professional lifeguard — have a self-absorbed propensity to exaggerate their track record in the open water, often misrepresenting their actual practical knowledge.

“Those of us who have devoted our lives to the sport of open water swimming — and proven ourselves as race directors, winners in international competitions, educators and coaches of elite athletes — are very concerned when individuals fake or plagiarize knowledge of our sport.”

Steven Munatones
Founder, Daily News of Open Water Swimming, Open Water Swim Magazine, Openwaterpedia.
9-time USA Swimming National Open Water Swimming Coach. International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame Honor Swimmer & Board Director.

I first met Bryan Mineo in May of 2012 at the Cap 2K Open Water Swim in Austin, Texas. I was there with a camera crew swimming the race, and Bryan was there with his girlfriend D’Ann Arthur, a budding triathlete. He seemed mesmerized by the camera and asked if I would like to interview him or D’Ann. I declined and made the following video:

Video (Google Docs)

In the next year I saw the following three items:

• NBC DFW — Dallas Man’s Icy Road to Swimming the English Channel
• FD Magazine — 10 Facts About Bryan Mineo
• Dallas News Health Blog — Bryan Mineo’s training to swim the English Channel

Some of these links have been removed and are no longer active.

I contacted the Dallas Morning News and NBC 5, not because of the self-promotion of Bryan Mineo, but because they had missed the story. There was a woman in the summer of 2013 that was from Dallas, had done the qualifying swims for the English Channel, and was scheduled to actually swim the Channel that summer. Her name was Joanna Cain. After this incident I was contacted through social media by Bryan Mineo. He told me “everyone in the open water community was nice to him but me.”

In the spring of 2015, I was in contact with Jene Shaw, the Senior Editor of Triathlete Magazine. I wanted to write for Triathlete Magazine. I felt like I had a lot to offer. I had been a swimmer on the US National Team, I was the first woman 6 times out of the swim in the Ironman World Championships, and many times I was the first person out of the swim — male or female — in the race. I had become a coach and a teacher and I had worked with such high-profile triathletes as Rinny Carfrae and Angela Naeth. I had made a difference.

I felt I was really on to something to shorten the learning swim curve for triathletes. I sent her emails with what I proposed. Articles I suggested: “3 ways to improve your swimming posture.”

After I would send in these queries, I started seeing articles by Bryan Mineo. I talked about obscure things like lifting your chest swimming like a superhero with a proud chest, and he would write about “swimming proud.” Then I saw this:

Three ways to improve your swimming posture by Bryan Mineo. Published version. It had been published even earlier in Triathlete Europe.

I was livid. I called Jene Shaw on April 7th, 2015 and she said she would call me on Thursday. (I have both phone and email records.) She did. I was not pleasant. I asked her why she was using him for clinics and articles when he had no background in coaching, competing, writing or researching.

Jene stated: “She felt sorry for him and was throwing him a bone.” She also told me “not to worry about it because they only pay $300 per article” and that she was using him for the swim clinics “because he was already in California.” She continued on to tell me she liked using Sara McLarty because she “didn’t have to even read what she sent in.” I wondered what kind of editor this was.

“If I kept this up, I would wish I never met him.”
— Bryan Mineo, threatening Eney Jones by phone, April 2015

Within the hour, Bryan Mineo called me. He had just met Jene for Happy Hour. He told me “if I kept this up, I would wish I never met him.” I told him, “I already wish I had never met you.” It was not a pleasant ordeal. He was threatening me. I could not believe Jene Shaw had given him my phone number, but now knew she just fed him with information, personal and public. She then subsequently blocked me on social media, which I thought was odd, because who is blocked by a magazine’s Twitter feed?

In the last year I have tried to distance myself from Bryan Mineo. I was disheartened at the lack of professionalism that caused him to rise as an expert when he was just a neophyte. The hardest thing for me is that he has more perceived credibility than I have and many of my “unique” concepts are now his, even though I have trademarks: he beat me to the mainstream, which is all that matters.

I first became aware of Bryan Mineo four or five years ago. He started showing up at several of the pools we were using for our Masters Swim Club.

My first real conversation with him was at a private club where I have taught private lessons for over twenty years. Bryan had befriended one of my masters swimmers and was now swimming with her. Our conversation was short — he told me he was a marathon swimmer and was going to swim the English Channel. I asked a few questions about his experience with open water; he had none. I told him there were a couple swimmers in Dallas that had completed the channel and had extensive open water experience both as swimmers and as coaches. He told me he knew what he needed and did not need a coach. I asked a few more questions. Do you have a boat? What date do you have reserved? How much are you swimming? The basic kind of questions a coach/swimmer would ask someone that is preparing for an extreme swim.

Bryan had no answers for my questions.

My swimmer showed up, I worked with him and Bryan started his swimming workout. One thing that to this day still sticks out in my mind is he couldn’t do flip turns and he had an incredibly poor stroke technique, head position was high and entry was short with a very long pause and glide. I recall thinking “that boy with that stroke is going to have a very long day in the Channel.”

After my first interaction my BS meter was on full alert. All of us that have coached have met our share of big talkers so I filed him in my brain as “he’s full of it.” After that first meeting I would come across him at a few pools teaching, and would say hello. He began making a name for himself as a world-class open water swimmer and the self-described “premier expert swimming and open water coach in all of Texas.” His words from his web page.

Personally I thought that was a bold claim to make since I employ over twenty coaches that I would say have more coaching, teaching and competition experience than he has, not to mention the two SMU coaches both of whom have had athletes on the world championship teams complete the Channel, set the record for the English Channel Crossing, as well as the record for Catalina. Clearly this guy had no clue what he was talking about, and was — to quote my mother — “fond of blowing his own horn.”

I didn’t give it much thought until he started posting and attacking my program, our coaches, and poaching some of my members and clients by promising a real coaching experience.

He started offering open water events; some of the swimmers he was willing to take to a lake in Dallas without lifeguards was mind-boggling to me. They weren’t ready to be swimming outside of a pool in my opinion, and certainly not without safety along for the swim.

Over time he continued to show up in local publications using his “I’m going to swim the English Channel” as his marketing slogan. Sadly, in Dallas our sports media is not the most diligent in checking facts or verifying statements. So for a short time he built a small group following, never learned to do flip turns, never entered a meet, and up until he left Dallas, never swam a cold water event. In fact, in one clinic he told a group he figured he would be done with the Channel in just over 7 hours. The record is 6 hours and 55 minutes, this said by a guy that can’t do flip turns and has never done a true cold endurance swim. I figured he was just full of it and would say anything to get his name out.

While he lived in Dallas which was his second stop in Texas, he lived in Austin for a short time and had a group he called Keep Austin Fit. My understanding is he was engaged and left Austin to get away from the relationship. In Dallas he started a Keep Dallas Fit group, the purpose of these groups was never clear to me except that I believe you could join and then he would tell you where and when to meet and a workout of some sort would happen. Neither program lasted, so he started Mineo Athletics.

He claimed to be a physical therapist; he stated he had worked at every major hospital in the Dallas–Fort Worth area. A search of Texas license board shows he has never held a license to practice as a physical therapist in the state of Texas. He later changed on his web page that he was a physical therapy aide. In Texas an aide is also required to hold a license. He held no license.

Once he had moved from Dallas I gave him little thought; he would show up from time to time at my club and teach lessons, he had become the “organic swim coach” whatever that means.

In the past year I was made aware of him as he has tried to work with friends of mine in Southern California. Needless to say, he had a difficult time when people asked if he knew me, and would I vouch for him. Sad to say but I believe Bryan is not a bright spot in the swimming community. The fact that so many so-called experts have been fooled shows his skill at manipulation, and more sadly the general laziness of many in the publishing business.

If over time Bryan learns to teach, learns to coach, learns flip turns, accomplishes some of the things he claims, and of course learns to foot-note and give credit for others’ work, he may become a decent teacher. Who am I kidding — that would require work, real work, and con men tend to stay away from that type of stuff.

I submit this as a short recollection of Bryan Mineo.

This is what I know about Bryan:

When he and his wife, D’Ann, first moved to the South Bay they joined Spectrum Redondo Beach (now The Bay Club). They both came to my Masters Swim workout the first day they joined. They were friendly and introduced themselves to everyone. D’Ann explained that she had been a pro triathlete and had just retired. She became a swimming and triathlon coach, and had a website. Bryan was her photographer and took videos of her clients. They both swam, and she had a beautiful stroke, was smooth and graceful in the water. Bryan was rough and choppy and didn’t know how to do flip turns. He swam like a surfer, with his head barely in the water and his legs much lower, but he had decent speed. That first night, Bryan did not make any claims of being a swim coach. I also went home and looked at their website, “Mineo Athletics.” It was filled with photos of D’Ann and other athletes, taken by Bryan. It listed D’Ann as the coach.

My coworker, Rick Crump, needed someone to sub his Masters Swim classes for the whole summer. He met Bryan and offered to give him the workouts, if Bryan would write them on the whiteboard. Rick arranged for Spectrum to hire Bryan as his sub. As soon as Bryan started subbing, he began offering private swim lessons in the ocean. Several women I know found Bryan attractive, and paid for private lessons.

Several months later, I ran into D’Ann at the beach. She told me that Bryan had asked for a divorce with a text message. She tried to have her attorney serve the divorce papers, but Bryan would jump out the back window and run away when they knocked on the door. She had closed all of their joint bank accounts. She discovered that Bryan had withdrawn $10,000 that they had raised for the Make-A-Wish Foundation and was living off the money. She turned over all of their financial statements to federal investigators. They were working on a case to indict him for fraud.

The next job that Bryan had at Spectrum Redondo was as an instructor for “Mo’s Swim Club,” which is a junior lifeguard training program. They fired him after he repeatedly no-showed for his shifts.

The first summer he was in town, Bryan asked the swimmers about swim groups in the area. He heard about my group that met at 9:00 on Saturdays. He went to the same beach at 8:30, and tried to get my friends to swim with him instead. Most of them just laughed and said no thanks. But two women did join him. They told me that he said their first swim was free, and after that they would have to pay him $20 each swim. He pressured them hard to buy a package of swim lessons. One of the women did buy the package; she said originally because she liked his looks, but also she felt sorry for him. She said the lessons were fine, he swam next to her in the ocean.

Next he went to Palos Verdes Equinox, where I work, and told them that he was an expert swim coach who worked with elite level athletes. He convinced them to let him run a series of “Swim Faster Freestyle” clinics on Wednesday nights. The clinics were supposed to be ongoing for several months. But Bryan’s attendance was sporadic. He would be there for a few weeks, and then the swimmers would show up but he wouldn’t. That wasn’t enough to get him fired though. He snuck a 5-year-old boy in for a private lesson, on the manager’s day off. The dad was standing in the lobby talking about how he had purchased a big package of lessons for his son on Bryan’s website. But Equinox is an adult-only facility. No little children were allowed in the pool. The members were in an uproar. They were all taking pictures and sending them to the managers. That got Bryan fired.

The last place I know that Bryan worked was Spectrum South Bay in El Segundo. He had a few midday Masters Swim workouts. He got fired after he repeatedly no-showed.

Now he is dating Rebecca Soni. I saw them swim together at Spectrum Redondo. She must have taught him how to do a flip turn, and smooth out his stroke, because it looks better now. He is advertising free swim groups on the beach in Redondo. He has thankfully moved a few blocks down the beach from where my group meets. But he has a habit of trying to worm his way into any swimming action he hears about. He will probably bother us again.

“I think of swim coaches as people with integrity, like lifeguards and firemen. Bryan is not like that.”

It bothers me that he is shady and unreliable, and that gives swim coaches a bad reputation. I don’t want to be associated with that.

He likely has serious issues he is however unconscious of, and he’s also opportunistic and uses others for personal gain/fame or otherwise to appear as you have said — something other than he is. I haven’t spoken to him in years and all recent attempts he’s made to FB friend me repeatedly have been declined by me. Want nothing to do with him.

He thinks he’s immune to karma as well as the greatest thing that ever happened in the world. Tough illusion to be in. I sold him a Kangen water machine; he initially contacted me to purchase a machine for athletic performance. And the lie he was training to swim the English Channel. I went to help him establish his portion of the alkaline water business. He convinced me of many things, among them “to date him” of which did not last long because I called him on his shit. He came to Boulder to apparently move here — as I was well established here with athletes and my businesses — but I told him he needed to establish his own stuff. So he, on the same day, decided he was done and drove back to TX, where he then found another girl to prey on for his dream of hanging out with pro athletes and getting them to buy the machines and boost his swimming ID and get sponsors for free things and prop his ego. He apparently married a triathlete girl a few months later, then informed her by text that he wanted a divorce within the first year or so.

I highly suspect after he found “some better opportunity” that would boost him in other ways. He has screwed people over repeatedly, I heard after our division of ways. I had gone to Dallas to help him create his Kangen water business and I had several personal things I left at his place — a bike, and cycling stuff so I would not have to fly it every time I went to do business there — and he refused to let me collect my personal belongings. That’s when I called his parents.

I met them on a trip we took under the pretense they wanted to buy a machine and I was to do the presentation for some of their friends. I called his father to help me get my things. At the end of it the dad (Gregg Mineo) did the negotiations between us and I had to get a triathlete friend of mine and Bryan’s to go pick up my bike and ship it because Bryan refused to do it. That was the thing his dad (Gregg Mineo) arranged: a time Bryan would be available for a pick-up. It was hugely embarrassing and he then began to tell lies and stories about me to common friends. Lord knows what stories he told that poor girl he married.

From Anita Lopez in Boulder